Brother, Mine
by Beth Nottingham
Summary: 7-year-old Owen Grady has spent his few years on earth in a broken and dysfunctional home, but things change unexpectedly for the better when he's scouted to be a part of a behavioral study along with three other children, and four velociraptor hatchlings. Kid!Owen, Kid!Claire, Kid!Barry, Gray (already a kid!), and everybody's four favorite terrible lizards.
1. Research Purposes

**A/N: Saw Jurassic Park last week, immediately read every piece of fanfiction I could get my hands on, and went to a second showing, because I had become so obsessed that I lived, ate and breathed velociraptors. (So obsessed, in fact, that I learned to spell "velociraptor" correctly, which is a serious achievement for me!)But, as it turns out, it was a trap. They set a trap.  
**

 **This feral, carnivorous bunny and its pack hunted me down and cornered me. They slashed cruelly at me with vicious claws, and the point is, I was still alive when they forced me to write this. (If you have not seen the original 1993 Jurassic Park and don't know what I'm talking about, go on YouTube and look up "Annoying Kid from Jurassic Park." That stuff about carnivorous bunnies will make a lot more sense after a two-minute clip!)**

Research Purposes

"It's simply too dangerous." Around the long ovular table, men and women in suits and dress-pants shifted uncomfortably, rifling through papers and taking little sips of coffee out of silver mugs with the Masrani Corporation logo printed artfully along the handles. On man stood, on the left side of the table, three chairs away from the head—he was the one voicing his doubts.

"The board agreed to 'a few small herbivores,'" he listed, counting the concessions of on his fingers, "then they agreed to larger herbivores, then packs, then small carnivores, then the T-Rex! We've already gone too far here—we cannot sanction the creation of not _one_ but a _pride_ of velociraptors! You've already said they'd be too dangerous to ever use as a park attraction. Tell me, Dr. Wu, just what safety measures can you possibly have cooked up to make you think it's wise to create such monsters?"

At the foot of the table, a middle-aged Asian gentleman sat, poised and calm—a strong contrast to the agitation in the board members. Two women sat on either side of him, the one in his right taking careful notes in short-hand, the one on his left looking through some papers on the table in front of her, waiting for her boss's cue to speak.

"We believe that the raptors' intelligence and adaptability can be used to help us control them," Henry Wu explained. "If they are raised correctly, since they are possessing of near-human mental faculties, they may be taught to 'listen to reason,' if you will." Snorts of derision, raised eyebrows and confused stares were the only response he received from the other people at the table.

"I assume," a low, accented voice said from the head of the table, and the rest of the board fell silent immediately, "that when you put it like that, you actually mean you have a more complex, more viable plan in place?"

"Of course, Mr. Masrani," Dr. Wu assured him, a small smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. That was the fantastic thing about men with _vision_. Simon would never dismiss an insane idea off-hand without at least giving the lunatic the chance to explain himself fully. Of course, that behavior was likely to get the businessman into some pretty hot water one day, but for now, it would be Henry Wu's salvation. "Ladies and gentlemen of the board, allow me to introduce my colleague, behavioral psychologist Dr. Zara Young."

The woman seated to Dr. Wu's left stood up as his words and took a step back from her chair, pulling a small remote out of her pocket and directing it at a ceiling-mounted projector.

"If you would all please direct your attention to the screen," she requested politely as her slideshow began. "I'd like to introduce you to Project Symbiosis."

Zara spent a full hour tossing around phrases like "engineered imprinting" and "social habits" and "learned mannerisms." Henry was already fully aware of the details, but he listened carefully anyway—it wouldn't do to slip up and stray from the official story.

It would be rather difficult to recover from the uproar he'd create if he told them _exactly_ how they'd envision this working. After all, even the most progress-minded businessmen tended to get irrationally protective of children, didn't they?

It wasn't like the kids would be in any serious danger, after all. The raptors would be smaller than Yorkshire Terriers during the first phase, and if that didn't go down successfully, then they'd have no reason to proceed to the second phase. The worst thing that could possibly happen would be that one of the children would pull a raptor's tail and get the same reaction—with about the same level of damage—that they'd receive from a housecat for the same offense. And of course, they'd be closely supervised at all times, by both scientists and security personnel. Still, admitting that the intended age-range for the "human counterparts" was between 6 and 9 probably wouldn't go over very well with the board. They had to be young enough that the raptors would perceive that they were growing up "with" their handlers.

However, Zara made sure not to mention any of the more delicate details, and spoke so persuasively and professionally that by the end of her presentation, even the nay-sayers were starting to nod thoughtfully.

"If anything goes wrong, we can always pull the plug, using the lysine contingency if necessary," she finished. "And in that event, we'd have the opportunity to perform autopsies and biological studies with the remains, so it wouldn't be a total loss."

"And speaking of monetary concerns," Wu jumped in at last, "I'd like to point out that we still have the embryos in cold storage that we recovered when we first reclaimed the island, so the cost would be extremely minimal. We stand to lose very little, and gain very much, by making this attempt."

The board members began tossing out comments—concerns, objections, agreements—all of which Zara and Henry took in stride, easily answering in calm, smooth voices. They had talked this over at length between themselves, anticipating possible questions and the best answers they could give, both to convince the board and to avoid saying anything that might condemn them.

Of course, he'd had to convince Zara that the latter was mostly due to the former; she didn't really need to know about his ties to InGen. All she needed to do was help him create a pride of trainable velociraptors, a task for which she would be compensated beyond her wildest dreams if she was successful. With something like that dangling in front of her, she wasn't the sort of person likely to probe too deeply into his reasons for wanting them.

"For research purposes" was enough to satisfy her.

"You have the green light, Dr. Wu," Mr. Masrani said after a lengthy discussion, a wide, even-toothed smile on his swarthy face that made his eyes crinkle good-naturedly at the corners.

"Thank you, sir," Wu said with the easy, natural grin he'd perfected over years of playing both ends against the middle and getting away with it.

 **A/N: This is more of a prologue than a first chapter, but it drives me completely bonkers when I have a prologue, and then the site insists on calling the first chapter the second chapter. So, a "half chapter" to start since I can't mark it "Chapter 0." Next up, meet the kids!**


	2. New Faces

**A/N: Hello again. Warning:** _ **brief**_ **mentions of alcohol, smoking and child abuse, mostly in the first three paragraphs. (Emphasis on brief. Not too much beyond those first three paragraphs.)**

 **I'll shut up now and let you read. Okay, bye.**

New Faces

Owen Grady scuffed the toe of his worn-out sneaker against the soft grey carpet of the waiting room, keeping his head down so that his shaggy blonde curls would cover the two-day old bruise above his right eye. Of all the embarrassing things, he had to have a shiner on the day he flew to a tropical island for the final interview to see if he could earn his family ten thousand dollars for some psychology experiment thing.

"You'd better do this right," his dad had growled at him, his hangover showing in his bleary eyes and stinking on his breath. "We need that money, kid. Food ain't free, you know."

' _Gee, thanks dad_ ,' he thought grumpily. ' _I'm sure this stupid bruise gives me a great chance of getting picked. Besides, we all know you'll just blow it on beer and cigarettes._ ' He dug his toe a little harder into the carpeting, and snuck a glance around at the twenty or so other kids around the room. Most of them were sitting, but a few stood, leaning against the walls. One tow-headed boy was cross-legged on the floor. There seemed to be an even mix of boys and girls, with varying skin tones and hair colors. The only things Owen could see in common with all of them were their ages and the fact that none of them had that clean, healthy glow that you see on kids from rich, happy homes.

' _Of course not_ ,' he reasoned after a minute. ' _What kind of parents lend their kids out for money? Especially when it involves flying across half the world and doing science stuff…_ '

"Sonia Adams," an unfamiliar voice called, and a mousy brunette woman escorted one of the girls down a hallway. The waiting room was oddly quiet, considering it held nineteen grade-school-aged children, but none of them knew each other, and half of them probably had jet lag. One boy chose that moment to lie down across three empty chairs with his arms folded behind his head, apparently with every intention of taking a nap. His name was probably at the end of the alphabet, Owen thought with a pang of jealousy. He wished he either had an A-name so he could go first and be done, or a T-name so he'd know he had a nice long time to relax while everyone else finished up.

Off to Owen's left, a girl with astonishingly bright red hair had a fat hardcover book open on her folded legs. He leaned down on the pretense of tightening his shoelace so he could see part of the front cover, but it wasn't anything he recognized, like _Harry Potter_ or _A Series of Unfortunate Events_. Why hadn't he thought to bring a comic book or something?

But by the time he'd berated himself for not having anything entertaining on him, the mousy woman had reappeared and called, "Claire Dearing." The red-head marked her page with a scrap of paper she'd tucked into the back cover, clamped the book under her arm, and followed the woman out. Apparently, the final interview was a pretty quick affair.

Nervousness and relief sloshed around in Owen's stomach. Short was good—he'd get it over with that much more quickly. But what if he couldn't do a good first impression in the first minute? He wouldn't have much time to change the interviewer's mind. Even though he knew he'd be sent home with a thousand bucks just for coming to the screening, he knew that his dad expected him to turn up with a lot more. He rubbed irritably at his sore eye, wishing he'd never heard of Masa-whatever corporation and their dumb science experiment.

"Barry Finelle," who was called after Claire Dearing, turned out to be the boy who'd tried to take a nap. Owen's stomach churned harder. F came right before G in the alphabet…

"Owen Grady," the woman announced, and he sprang to his feet, worried he wouldn't have the guts to do it if he thought about it too hard.

The hallway was fairly short, and only had one turn before they reached an office with "Dr. Zara Young" stenciled carefully on the door. Dr. Young turned out to be a pale, black-haired woman with a pleasant smile and a British accent.

"Have a seat, Mr. Grady," she said, indicating a chair in front of her desk.

"Owen," he corrected awkwardly. She glanced at him thoughtfully. "I already feel enough like I'm at the principal's office," he muttered with a shrug, and she chuckled.

"Owen, then," she obliged. "Tell me a little about yourself."

"What do you want to know?" He asked, reflexively answering the question with a question. That was so open-ended; it felt like a trap, like she was waiting for him to forget every interesting thing about himself and sit there stammering like an idiot until she failed him and put him on the plane back to Texas.

"Well," she said folding her hands on the desk, "do you have any siblings, Owen?"

"No," he answered.

"Any pets?"

"No," he said again, wishing he had something more interesting to say. This was like a test for which he not only hadn't studied, but hadn't even sat through the right class. "I walk my neighbor's dog sometimes, though," he added as a picture of an Irish Setter on the woman's desk reminded him of taking Ned to the Greenwood—the tree and shrub-filled undeveloped lot at the end of his short street.

"Do you like dogs?" Dr. Young asked, smiling a little. "Animals in general?"

"Yeah," Owen responded, thinking briefly about the stray cats in his neighborhood. The old lady across the street would put out food for them sometimes, and if he sat very still on her front porch while holding the bowl, he could sometimes get them to eat out of his hand. His family didn't have a lot of money, and there weren't any kids his age within the short stretch of sidewalk he was allowed to traverse by himself, so he was usually on his own to occupy himself during his free time. Needless to say, he spent as little of that inside the house as humanly possible. Sometimes Trina would pay him to walk Ned, and that was nice. "Yeah, I like animals."

"How about snakes and lizards?" Dr. Young pressed. "Are you afraid of them?"

"No," Owen replied truthfully. "I mean, I guess if I met a cobra or something I'd get scared, but other than that…"

"I see," the woman nodded. "Thank you, Owen. There's another room at the end of this hall—please go and wait there. When the rest of the candidates are done with screening, I'll join you all."

Screening? He was confused for a moment, but then it occurred to him that they'd all been booked into the hotel for a three-day stay, so clearly these people weren't intending for the interviews to be a minute apiece. Whatever the final test was, it hadn't happened yet. Owen was both relieved and disappointed as he stood up, giving his chair an awkward little push towards the desk, and left the room. He supposed, as he walked further down the hallway, that he probably should've said "thank you" or something, but if he'd opened his mouth, he was pretty sure the only thing that would've come out of it was, "did I pass?"

' _Stupid lady_ ,' he thought irritably. ' _Keeping us in suspense..._ '

"Hey," Barry Finelle greeted him as he entered a nondescript room furnished with couches, a water cooler, and very little else. "So, what did she ask you?"

"Just if I liked animals," Owen responded with a shrug. "If I ever had a dog, if I was afraid of snakes. You?"

"Same," Barry said with a nod. The blonde girl—Sonia—and the ginger—Claire—nodded along with him.

"Well, it makes sense," Claire added with a shrug. The other three looked at her, eyebrows crooked. "Um, you know where we are, right?" She asked, raising her own eyebrows.

"An island in South America?" Owen supplied, feeling stupid. It wasn't that he didn't know the name of the place—he just didn't remember it at that exact moment.

"Isla Nublar," Barry supplied, and through his embarrassment Owen found himself feeling a slight flash of admiration that the other boy could pronounce the foreign words so clearly when his voice already had such a thick accent. It sounded French, but Owen couldn't know for sure. Could be ancient Greek or Swahili for all he knew.

"Jurassic World!" Claire groaned. "The dinosaur island? Their experiment obviously has something to do with dinosaurs."

"Awesome!" Exclaimed a new voice, belonging to the boy who'd been sitting on the floor in the other waiting room. He flopped down on a chair this time, running a hand through his shaggy curls.

"But what would they need kids for?" Owen asked. _'Especially kids like us,'_ he added mentally. Barry's eyes had a hardness to them usually reserved for adults, and although Claire was scrupulously clean, her clothes were faded, and her shoes looked painfully tight. Her book—the Chronicles of Narnia, he finally saw—had a crossed-out library barcode on the front; she'd bought it off a sale cart, most likely. The curly-haired boy had a wide-eyed excitement in his face, but his jeans had holes in the knees, exposing layers of darker scar tissue from falling and skinning them a lot. His sneakers were the right size, but they were falling apart, repaired with duct tape—the plain silver kind. Second-hand, probably.

Owen knew it was weird to be looking at stuff like this, but he'd always been very good at noticing little things, finding Waldo, catching trick questions before embarrassing himself, that sort of thing. It tended to be helpful for things like making himself _seem_ to have done his homework, or reading his dad's moods and states of inebriation. And besides, he really couldn't think of any reason why the Jurassic World people would need a bunch of kids, especially kids like them.

"Wonder if they'll give us free park passes while we're here," Barry mused thoughtfully. "I've always wanted to see a T-rex up close."

"Oh, yeah!" the curly blonde boy gasped in excitement. "That'd be so awesome! I saw the website—we can ride the triceratops, and pet baby brachiosaurs, and watch them feed the T-Rex, and, and—"

"I doubt they're going to give us passes," Sonia Adams sighed. "They cost a _fortune_. My mom says a ticket for one day would feed our family for a month." From the look on her face, she'd asked several times before getting shut down so firmly. The blonde boy's face fell, his big blue eyes losing a little of their light. Although Owen privately agreed with Sonia, he didn't like that the kid's over-the-top enthusiasm was dampened.

"We can always ask," he said with a shrug. "I mean, we _are_ here already, and they _are_ putting us up for the next couple of days. It wouldn't cost 'em anything to let us try a couple of things."

Claire shrugged, opening her book back up and vanishing behind it. Sonia just rolled her eyes, but didn't comment again.

"Thanks," the blonde boy said, looking over at Owen, who sat down a few seats from him. "I'm Gray Mitchell."

"Owen Grady," he responded. "So," he continued, not wanting a repeat of the boring, mostly silent waiting room he'd just left, "you like dinosaurs?"

As Owen had expected, Gray Mitchell did indeed like dinosaurs, and was perfectly willing to yammer on about them, practically without drawing breath. Owen smiled and nodded in the appropriate places, occasionally making comments. The kid was smart, he'd give him that. He knew a remarkable number of minute facts about the park and the animals, even if he did have trouble pronouncing some of the science-ey words.

That was another thing that at least some of them had in common, Owen thought briefly. Clearly, Claire was pretty smart. So was Gray. And as for himself, he was a fast learner, and he'd heard endlessly from his teachers that if he could sit still and listen for more than three minutes, he'd probably have straight A's. Of course, he _wouldn't_ sit still and listen for more than three minutes when all they did was talk about boring stuff, so the point was moot, but it was something to consider. The girl with the glasses had opened up a book of Sudoku puzzles, and was filling them in at an impressive rate. Could be a coincidence. But it might not be.

By the time Harry Williams had joined them, followed closely by Dr. Young, Owen knew more about dinosaurs then he'd ever imagined one person could say in such a short span of time. Now, if only teachers could give information like _that_ , make it interesting, then maybe Owen would pay attention and remember it all.

"By now, you're probably all wondering why you're here," Dr. Young started, walking over to the opposite wall and flipping what looked like an ordinary light switch. Immediately, a thin, wallpaper-covered panel slid open like an automatic door, revealing the glass wall behind it, and beyond that, a lab full of people in white coats, computers displaying complicated equations and graphs, and in the center…

"These are dinosaur eggs," she announced, gesturing at a little round table with a glass dome on top, sheltering four large eggs. "They're velociraptors." Grey and Barry both gasped. Gray looked like Christmas had come early, but Barry looked like he was going to be violently sick.

"Aren't those really dangerous?" a boy whose name Owen hadn't caught asked.

"So are T-Rexes, but they have one of those," Claire reminded him.

"You're both correct, Jason, Claire," Dr. Young agreed, nodding at both of them. "Raptors are carnivores—meat-eaters. They're very smart, very fast, and they hunt in groups. That's why the scientists have avoided making them until now."

"That, and they killed a whole bunch of people the last time," Barry muttered under his breath, so quietly that Owen was probably the only one who heard.

"However, since they are so smart, we believe that if we introduce them to humans when they're only babies, we can teach them not to see us as their enemies. Now, I'm sure at some point, all of you have seen baby ducks or chickens following their mothers around, at least in pictures, right?" Heads nodded around the room.

"Many animals do something called 'imprinting,' where they recognize a specific creature as their source of food, safety and comfort early on, and bond with them. Dinosaurs also do this. What we're hoping to do in this experiment is have you kids around when the raptors hatch, and see if we can get them to imprint on you. If they grow up seeing humans as protectors and providers, they'll likely be a lot less violent towards us."

"Why kids, though?" Owen asked. "Why not scientists?"

"Good question," Dr. Young admitted. "Four of you will end up staying for the full duration—five months. We want the raptors to feel that you and they are all learning about life together, instead of you teaching them. This will help strengthen their bond with you. You'll be closer to them in size. Also, at your age, most of you haven't had time to develop any real biases about velociraptors, while many adults have."

"Because they watch the news," Barry added gruffly, and then continued louder, "what if we get eaten? Is this safe?"

"You will be supervised with the animals at all times," Dr. Young assured him quickly. "You will only be interacting with them when they're young—once they become dangerous, you'll have bars and safety glass between you and them. Appropriate precautions will absolutely be taken. And it'll be three months after you leave that they're big and strong enough to kill humans.

That being said, this is a lot like having a new puppy. Don't pull their tails, don't startle them, don't try to hurt them. These are _baby_ animals—they're very fragile. You'll have to be gentle."

"What if we don't want to do it?" The girl with the glasses asked timidly, eyeing the eggs with distrust.

"We'll send you home with half of the participation money just for coming this far," Dr. Young promised. The girl nodded, and Owen caught two other relieved expressions out of his peripheral vision. But most of the kids didn't look interested in the idea of going home without going all the way. Owen knew for sure that _he_ wouldn't—but then, he had a very strong reason for not wanting to go home a failure. He looked at the eggs, trying to imagine how big the animals inside would be once they hatched. A little bigger than rats, he thought with a mental shrug. That didn't sound so bad.

"Now, the technicians have assured us that the eggs won't hatch this afternoon," Dr. Young finished, "so you can all have some free time. Dinner's at six in the hotel conference room, and if you would like, we will give you VIP bands so you can check out a few of our attractions while you're here.

Sonia Adams blinked in surprise and disbelief before her wild grin stretched nearly as wide as Gray's.

"Sweet!" Owen said softly, visions of Jurassic World's T-Rex already dancing through his mind.

 **A/N: Warning! The feral velocibunnies are stalking you as we speak, hiding in the shadows beneath the table, behind the chair, under the couch. Don't see them? Of course not—they're clever, and masters of camouflage. However, despair not. Recent studies by InGen Research has discovered that velocibunnies are so put-off by people reviewing fanfiction that they barely regard them as food-like at all. Save yourselves! Hit the review button! Don't go into the long grass!**

 **Thanks for reading!**


	3. Amber Eyes

**A/N: Hey, people! welcome to chapter 3!**

Amber Eyes

Owen was fast asleep when a hand on his shoulder jerked him into sudden and panicked wakefulness. He froze, laying perfectly still, heart pounding in his ears, until a blissfully unfamiliar voice intruded on his drowsy fear, telling him to wake up.

"What?" He groaned, wriggling onto his side so he could sit up comfortably.

"Everyone has to go to the lab right away," the stranger informed him quickly. "The bus is leaving in five minutes."

"Okay," Owen yawned grumpily, staring at the clock with bleary eyes. It was four in the morning. Why did they have to go to the lab at four in the—

"They're hatching?!" He exclaimed, bolting to his feet as his brain caught up.

"Yep," the stranger said with a dry laugh. "Five minutes, kid. If you aren't down there, we leave without you." Then he turned and left to go and wake up the kid in the next room.

Two minutes and seventeen seconds later, Owen was dashing out of the elevator into the lobby, where Gray and two other kids whose names he didn't know were already waiting. Gray's eyes were huge with excitement; if he was still sleepy, he didn't show it. Owen didn't sit down on the lobby couches, choosing instead to pace around the room, both to settle down his sudden restless energy and to keep himself from dozing off. This was not a good time to be all tired and foggy in the head.

The other kids all made it down within the time limit, although Claire Dearing looked very much like she was plotting out every detail of her waker's murder. Probably she'd taken advantage of the complete lack of adult interference to stay up way too late reading or something. Owen, for his part, had fully exploited the gaming console in the room until he quite literally couldn't see straight. Of course, that meant he'd had the advantage in this sudden waking situation—he'd slept in his clothes. They were horribly wrinkled now, but it wasn't like a bunch of newly-hatched baby reptiles were going to care.

"I hope I get picked," Gray moaned, bouncing up and down in his seat as the bus pulled up to the lab.

"Better you than me," Barry murmured, running a hand across the short layer of curly black hair adorning his head.

"It can't be _that_ dangerous," a girl commented with a shrug. "They wouldn't let kids do it if it was." Owen reserved judgement on that point, but didn't say anything. There was no reason to freak everyone out.

"Hello, everyone," a tall Asian man in a black turtleneck and a white coat greeted them as they entered the building. "We're a little ahead of schedule. Follow me, please."

He led them to a small room with four large sinks—or miniature bathtubs—along one wall, and a low table on the other side with several plates of what Owen was pretty sure was raw ground beef, and some bowls of water. In the center was a big round cushion with a raised lip around the edge, strongly reminiscent of a dog bed. On it lay the four eggs, two of which were wiggling around.

"Now," the Asian man said, clapping his hands once get everyone's attention, "the far wall is a two-way mirror. There are cameras in each corner of the room, and a team of scientists and security people waiting right through that door in case anything bad happens. But we don't anticipate any issues. We'd planned to brief you more thoroughly, but it seems these babies are in a hurry to meet their new world.

Just a couple of instructions before the shells start cracking: first, it is extremely important that you _not_ try to help them get out of the eggs. The act of breaking through the shells and pushing their way out is extremely important to the raptors' development. If they don't have this first exercise, they won't grow right. So you _cannot_ touch until they're clear of the eggs.

After they hatch, they'll be very slimy—you can wash them off over there. Be very careful not to put their heads under—they have to breathe just like you and I. They'll also be hungry; the meat and water on that table are available to feed them. Make sure you are _extremely_ gentle.

And, finally, don't try to _make_ them like you, and don't spend all your time focusing on one of them. Try to give each of them the chance to see you. If one seems to attach to you, let it. If it seems attached to someone else, don't get in between them. We will be watching carefully from behind the mirror, and giving instructions on the speaker.

Good luck, everybody," he concluded, and then vanished through a door in the far wall, leaving eighteen children and four twitching dinosaur eggs alone in the small, warm room.

At first, they all hovered around the cushion-nest, watching intently as the eggs rocked back and forth fractional distances. But after about twenty minutes of this, according to Owen's watch, most of them had sat down on the floor or gone to lean against the walls. They were all treating the nest like it had a foot-thick invisible barrier on it, after the guy's warning about not helping the dinosaurs out of the eggs. Owen had resumed pacing. If his constant tread annoyed anyone, they weren't saying. With each pass, he glanced over the eggs, searching for any signs of cracking. He kept his hands shoved in his pockets—a reminder to keep them to himself.

It was a quarter to five in the morning when the first breaks appeared on the smooth, speckled shells. Owen spotted the little spider-web cracks first, since he was walking past the nest, and he paused in his circuit of the room to watch in fascination as the tiny fissures lengthened and branched outward. It was incredibly slow going, though. One egg would expand the cracked area only to fall still and silent after a minute or two of effort. Then another egg would start up before doing the same thing a minute later.

Owen's tired brain was doing some pretty strange things, making him wonder what it was like to be born from an egg. He tried to imagine being cramped up in a tiny, dark space, knowing the only way out was to violently break down the doors. Vague memories of being locked in a closet a few times when he was younger flashed through his mind, and he shuddered. Perhaps it wasn't so difficult to imagine.

But these creatures _could_ get out, he reasoned. Baby animals had been hatching out of eggs since evolution was invented, after all. He had moved closer to the nest unconsciously, and now sat down cross-legged beside it, leaning as close as he dared to the eggs.

"C'mon, guys," he muttered. "You can do it."

"We aren't supposed to help," one of the other kids reminded him nervously, and Owen flushed, realizing belatedly that he'd spoken aloud.

"Moral support can't do anything bad, can it," he shot back. "Hey, guys, you got this," he added to the eggs, feeling like an idiot for opening his mouth in the first place, but figuring it would be more embarrassing if he stopped after defending his actions. "C'mon, guys. Big wide world waiting for you out here—it's way cooler than the inside of an egg. C'mon out here. You got this."

A tiny fragment of shell fell from the egg farthest from Owen, and a tiny black claw poked out.

"That's it, dude!" Owen exclaimed enthusiastically, forgetting for a moment the other seventeen kids in the room. "C'mon, now. Hardest part's over—that's it." He didn't actually know what the hardest part of breaking out of an egg was, of course, but it wasn't like they spoke English, so there was no way he could confuse them. He felt rather than saw someone else come up behind him, and a brief glance out of the corner of his eye showed it to be Barry. The tall dark-skinned boy didn't speak, but sat down beside Owen, close to the nest.

"Hey, look, your brother's peeking out," Owen continued, his mouth running on autopilot as a second egg shed a piece of shell to reveal a tiny yellow eye, which blinked a sideways eyelid at the watching humans before vanishing behind a clawed foot. On the other side of the nest, several other kids had drawn closer, including Gray and Claire.

"Come one, guys," Gray murmured, joining in with Owen. "Just a little further. You can do it."

"Hey, hey, keep pushing," a boy—Jason, Owen thought he remembered—added.

"Don't give up now," another girl chimed in.

"One last good shove, dude," Owen exclaimed as a raptor's entire leg kicked free of the shell. "C'mon—c'mon!" With a crackle of protest, the shell split down its side below the raptor's leg, revealing the tiny reptilian form lying in one of the pieces.

"Oh my god," one of the girls squealed, whether because she was excited or grossed out Owen couldn't tell.

"Okay guys, he did it, you can, too," Owen continued, feeling a lot less dumb now that he wasn't the only one rambling encouraging nonsense to a bunch of partially hatched dinosaurs. Barry leaned in, face transformed by fascination, and he carefully, gingerly scooped up the baby raptor, thumbs softly caressing its stomach. Owen actually heard him swallow, and he sort of understood why. Everyone knew that eggs had living things inside them, but it was very different once a tiny squirming creature had emerged.

"The water's already warm," someone said, and Barry stood up slowly and carried the baby reptile over to the sinks to bathe off all the pinkish goo and shell bits, aided by Sonia.

"All right, who's gonna be second?" Owen asked, rubbing his hands together. As if in response, another egg cracked right around the middle, and with an almighty heave, the dinosaur hauled itself out to sprawl in a little ungainly heap on the nest cushion. A couple of people clapped, and someone Owen didn't know gently lifted the creature out of the nest. Gray and two other guys followed the girl and the second raptor to the sinks.

"Okay, okay, here comes third," Owen carried on, commentating like it was a race. The third dinosaur's egg didn't get a nice long crack. He—or she, Owen couldn't tell—simply made a big roundish hole and crawled through it. Unexpectedly, it was Claire's hands that picked the little one up. He hadn't pegged her for someone who would willingly get goo on her skin, but then again, she had passed an interview where the only relevant question was, "do you like animals?"

The last egg continued to have trouble. It would crack and then rest, crack and then rest, like they'd all been doing in the beginning, but this one didn't seem to be making any headway. Owen had to remind himself twice that they weren't allowed to help.

"Just waiting on you, buddy," he said quietly. All the other kids were crowded around the food table with the three hatched babies, but he didn't want to leave the last one alone in the dark—although he supposed that being in an egg couldn't be as terrible an experience as being locked in a closet. It wasn't like chickens ever seemed to have any problem with small, dim spaces…

After several minutes, two claws finally protruded, far enough out that Owen could see a little streak of blue mingled with the green scales.

"You're gonna be a pretty one, huh? All fancy with your blue scales? Come on, Blue. Everyone's waiting for you. You got this. If a chicken can do it, you can do it. Come on, Blue." Little by little, tiny hairline crack by tiny hairline crack, the last egg crumbled around the middle. The cracks met on the other side, and the egg trembled once, twice, a third time. Then, slowly, the top half rose, carried by the tiny head of a raptor who was wearing the shell like a hat.

"Hey there, Blue," Owen whispered as a pair of curious golden eyes met his. Carefully, he reached in and removed the little shell-hat from the creature's head before lifting it up. The blue streaks went up its stubby little forelegs, along its back, and down its tail all the way to the tip. "Welcome to the world, Blue," he said softly, feeling a little choked up, although he couldn't think why. He knew people sometimes got really emotional about the miracle of new life, but that was only supposed to be new mothers, right? He sniffed and cleared his throat as he stood up and carried the blue-streaked reptile to the sinks.

The water did indeed run warm immediately, and the raptor squirmed around in confusion as the lower half of its body was submerged for the first time. Owen rubbed very lightly over its scales, applying as much pressure as he thought safe for a butterfly's wing and no more. The baby made little squeaking, moaning sounds that he hoped were pleasure and not discomfort.

Once most of the goop was off, Owen wrapped the little raptor in a fluffy towel from a stack near the sinks, and carried it over to its siblings to get some food. Glancing around, he saw that another unfamiliar boy had assumed control of the second hatchling, and the girl who'd initially taken it had gone to rinse meat off her hands, looking a bit grossed out. However, Gray was the one feeding the little dinosaur.

"Dinner time," Owen said quietly, picking up a lump of the ground meat and holding it to the creature's mouth. "Well, more like breakfast, I guess." It snatched the morsel without hesitation, chewing it with tiny teeth before gulping it down and opening its mouth with a wine.

"I guess that means, 'more' in dinosaur," Owen chuckled, grabbing some more meat. "Hungry boy."

"All of the dinosaurs in that clutch are female," Dr. Young's voice said quietly out of a speaker.

"Hungry girl," Owen amended, setting the reptile down near one of the water bowls so she could take her first drink. She lapped up the clear liquid for a little while before trying to stumble her way back to the closest foot plate. Her legs tangled beneath her, and Owen caught her as she fell.

"Easy there, Blue," he chided as he fed her another pinch. "I got it."

-0-

"Thoughts?" Dr. Young asked, taking a sip of her coffee as she carefully watched the kids interacting with the baby raptors.

"Grady and Finelle, obviously," Dr. Wu responded. Zara nodded.

"Of course. I think Mitchell, too, although I'd like to watch them a little longer. It's a toss-up between Dearing and Adams."

"If it helps," Henry murmured, "Dearing turned up to the airport in a cab—Adams arrived with her mom. If it's a question of who will be more able to stay for the long haul…" Zara was nodding again.

"Dearing's independence gives her an edge there," she agreed.

"We'll leave them be for another half hour," Wu decided. "Then the children can bring the assets to the nursery, and get a little sleep themselves. Is everything set up?" He asked, glancing over his shoulder.

"Four beds, four incubators," a man in a plain black uniform responded. "Sixteen security cameras, a team of armed guards, and two scientists to keep their eyes on things."

"Perfect," Henry said, turning back to the scene in the hatching room.

-0-

"We're going to have you bring the velociraptors to a nursery room," Dr. Young's voice announced on the speaker around the time that the dinosaurs had apparently decided they'd had enough food and activity for one morning, and had started to curl up and doze off in the humans' arms.

"Wrap them up," Barry said quietly to Claire and Gray, and Owen reached behind him to hand each of them a clean towel so they could gently swaddle the dinosaurs as he and Barry had already done.

"Barry Finelle, Claire Dearing, Owen Grady, Gray Mitchell," Dr. Young continued, "You four will be staying in the nursery with them. We have beds prepared. The rest of you may return to the hotel on the bus."

Owen was completely exhausted, so as he followed Barry out through the hidden door, he didn't immediately put two and two together. It wasn't until he saw Gray literally crying tears of joy and stroking the face of the sleeping creature he carried that he realized this meant the four of them were the ones who'd passed.

"Take off your hoodies and use them to make little nests in the incubators," the Asian doctor instructed once they reached the nondescript room where they'd be spending the night. "We want them to learn your scents and associate them with security." Barry, Owen and Claire removed the sweatshirts and jackets that they'd donned to discourage mosquitoes, placing them in the little warm boxes and laying the dinosaurs on the cloth. Gray switched out his T-shirt for one with the Jurassic World logo that a thoughtful staff member brought in for him; he hadn't worn layers.

"If they spontaneously fall asleep every time they smell us from now on," Gray quipped with a grin, "I'm blaming you." The doctor chuckled a little.

"G'night, Blue," Owen murmured as he lay down. "See you in the morning."

He might've imagined it, but he thought the raptor gave a little sleepy chirp in response.

"Welcome to Project Symbiosis," Dr. Wu murmured as he closed the door behind him

 **A/N: And welcome to the rest of the characters, haha.**

 **This just in: InGen has done it again-scienced the hell out of something without bothering to consider if it's a good idea. The T-Rex now has still-target-vision-goggles strapped to his head, and everyone who knows how to disable them was summarily eaten. Now he can see you even if you sit stock-still. However, one researcher-an avid fanfiction reader and writer-was clever enough to build in a safety-system. If the human targets post one fanfiction review after learning about Rexy's goggles, they will malfunction around that person. At the moment, the one clever researcher is hiding out somewhere in South America from all the angry investors who want him financially drawn and quartered, but until he is found, you can all take advantage of his fail-safe. InGen would like to assure the public that they are partnering with the Nottingham corporation to find this individual as quickly as possible. Everything is under contro-RAAAAAAAAAWRRR! EVERYBODY RUN! GET ON YOUR COMPUTERS, FIND A FANFIC AND POST A REVIEW! AAAGH!**


	4. Babysitting

**A/N: Quick disclaimer: anything inconsistent you see about animal training is due to the fact that I've never had a dog, a cat, a fish, a hamster, or anything larger than a caterpillar,** _ **ever**_ **in my 21 years on this earth. Closest I ever got to having a pet was when I'd feed my friend's family's rabbit and guinea pigs while they were out of town when I was in High School. Any hands-on stuff about animals is stuff I've seen, heard, read, or picked up from watching my best friend's family deal with their puppy (an excitable Yorkie who I'd swear in court was a kangaroo or a velociraptor in his past life… DAMN that little guy can jump.). So, yeah. That. But it's not like dinosaurs are going to behave the same way as dogs or cats, anyway—and these dinosaurs are smart cookies!**

Babysitting

Dinosaurs paraded through Owen's dreams that night. He was wandering down the street back home, walking near the curb, watching cars pass by him, long-necked brontosauruses in the drivers' seats. Triceratops congregated in the parking lot of the gas station where he sometimes stole gum, lowing quietly amongst themselves. A T-Rex was drinking out of the neglected fountain in the town square. Pterodactyls perched on telephone lines, flapping their wings occasionally and following Owen with their eyes.

He felt small. That was the first thing he really became aware of. Even the pachy-whatever-they-were-called-s busy butting heads in front of the train station seemed to tower over him. The second thing he noticed was that, amid all the roaming dinosaurs, there was a baby carriage in the cart-coral outside the supermarket. He wondered if it had somehow blown away from an outdoor sale or something.

Curiously, he walked towards it, followed by some gallimimuses who periodically bent down to snack on the bits of greenery growing up through the cracks in the asphalt. He was a few steps away from the stroller when he heard the baby crying.

Panic shot through him and he stumbled forward. There was an abandoned child? Here? With all the dinosaurs? But when he got close enough to see inside, he sighed in relief. It _was_ a baby—a baby raptor. It wasn't Blue, though. He lifted the little creature gently up, looking her over.

"Well, you're right at home here," he murmured.

He couldn't tell which of the others it was, but apparently she didn't like him very much; the crying seemed to get louder as he picked her up. But maybe she was just closer to his ears…

It took him a minute to realize that gravity was sideways, his face was shoved against a pillow, and the high keening sound was in fact coming from off to his left. He cracked an eye open and blinked blearily a few times, watching Barry cross the room quickly with a plate of meat from the fridge in the corner.

"Easy, Delta," Barry muttered as he started to feed her scraps.

"Delta?" Gray asked. He was sitting up in bed, his own baby dinosaur on his lap, apparently taking a morning nap. "Like the airline?"

"The markings on her tail are sort of triangular," Barry explained with an awkward shrug. "I guess I'll probably name her something else, if they even let me name her, but it keeps coming to mind. What have you been calling yours?"

"Charlie," Gray mumbled. "I know, it's weird, and she's a girl. But, like you said, it stuck."

"I have an Aunt Charlie," Claire said sleepily, yawning and stretching. "Sometimes it's a girl name." Her raptor gave a couple of chirps from the incubator as soon as she finished speaking.

"That's cool," Gray said in relief. Owen sat up, stretching his arms above his head. He glanced down to see that their duffle bags had all appeared overnight, and were piled next to their beds. Gray had apparently already realized this—he'd swapped out the borrowed Jurassic World shirt he'd slept in for an Iron Man T-shirt. When Owen's eyes fell on Blue in her incubator, he groaned.

"Really, Blue?" He demanded, watching as she carried on chewing holes in his hoodie. She'd apparently been at it for a while. She looked up at his voice, and he couldn't decide if the reptilian face was repentant or smug. Had to be smug, he reasoned when, a moment later, she returned to her task of puncturing the worn material as many times as possible.

"Guess this means you're hungry too," he grumbled, standing up and shuffling over to the fridge. It was one of those nice double-door affairs with a water dispenser on the front. The left side was a bunch of ground meat of varying species, and the right side, to his relief, held human foods such as milk, yogurt, fruit, bread and orange juice. He grabbed a plate of ground chicken and turned back to the incubator.

"Blue, huh?" Claire mused, and her raptor chittered again. "Guess you're the only one without a name, huh girl." Another chittered response. "Now you're copying me?" she asked rhetorically, retrieving her own plate of dinosaur food, and a little cup of blueberry yogurt for herself. The raptor chirped happily, only shutting up when its mouth was full of food.

"How about Cathy?" Barry suggested. Claire raised an eyebrow. "My mom calls talkative women 'chatty Cathies,'" he explained with a shrug.

"Hmm…" Claire hummed, and the raptor swallowed before warbling low in her throat without opening her mouth.

"Heh," Clair laughed softly at the little creature's imitation, and she responded with a short bark.

"Echo, more like," she said thoughtfully, offering more meat before the dinosaur could comment further.

"That suits her," Owen agreed with a laugh. Apparently, Blue didn't think he was paying her enough attention, because she took a nip at his fingers. It hurt, but she couldn't bite hard enough yet to do any more damage than a pinch. Still, Owen remembered when his neighbors were training their new puppy; they had to teach him not to bite right away, rather than waiting until he was old enough to actually injure someone.

Imitating his neighbor, he quickly pinched Blue's mouth shut—very gently, applying only enough force to keep her tiny jaws closed.

"No biting," he said firmly. "No biting," he repeated, then released her and waited a moment. She shook her head a little like she was trying to get the odd feeling off her snout. Then she chirruped, looking back at the meat. Obligingly, Owen fed her another mouthful.

"You okay?" Barry asked. Owen nodded.

"She's not strong enough yet to cut me," he said.

"You're uninjured?" an unfamiliar voice asked from the speaker.

"Yes, like I said," Owen responded, holding his hand up and turning it to show the cameras it wasn't hurt. It wasn't until later that afternoon, when some people in Jurassic World uniforms came in to bring the humans lunch, that it occurred to him that whoever was monitoring them hadn't sent in the cavalry when he'd been bitten. They'd waited to see what would happen first.

'Perfectly safe, _my butt_ ,' Owen thought, more in triumph than because it bothered him. ' _Owen's spider-sense: 1. Random girl from last night who believes what grown-ups tell her: 0_.'

-0-

"Yes, everything's going according to schedule," Henry said quietly, phone clamped between his ear and shoulder so he could free up his hands to type. "All four assets are healthy, and have begun bonding with their human counterparts. They're eating and drinking, have stable vitals, and are beginning to vocalize."

"Any incidents?"

"Subject D2-014 bit one of the children," Henry admitted, wrapping the coiled cord around his index finger a few times, "but he wasn't damaged. He didn't even seem terribly upset."

"You picked kids with guts, then."

"Dr. Young had a long list of criteria," Henry responded. "We searched through thousands of potentials, looking for high intelligence, high independence, physical stamina, adaptability, low family finances…"

"Yeah, low enough that the parents will sell you their kids for predator research."

"Lend," Henry corrected. "They'll go back in December. And they aren't in any danger—we have 24-hour surveillance and members of Asset Containment on standby at all times."

"And if the raptors are more loyal to individuals than you expected? What if these kids wind up being the only ones who can control them? I still think it would have been better to use trained InGen personnel."

"We've been over this," Dr. Wu sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose in irritation. "Dr. Young insisted that the training would only set in correctly if we used children. They have to develop side-by-side with the assets. The children will attend school on the island for a semester, keeping up with basic academics while participating in training exercises with the assets. The assets, in turn, will learn to be submissive to the same authorities to which the children are subject."

"So they'll obey all human adults?"

"In theory," Henry cautioned. "As I said in the beginning, we can only guess at how well the training will work, particularly with the pilot batch. It may take several generations before we have a consistently loyal bloodline."

"How long?"

"Hard to say," Henry sighed. "This isn't something you can rush. These things take time."

"I'll want regular progress reports."

"Yes sir," Henry responded, and a click and a dial tone signified that the conversation was over. He hung up his own phone and took a long sip of his coffee. Those InGen people were always so hasty…

-0-

"Welcome to the Rec Room," Dr. Young announced as she led the four children, each carrying the baby raptors, through a double-door. "For the first two weeks, this will be where you and the raptors spend the majority of your time. We're designing a facility with a large outdoor paddock and adjacent buildings, but it won't be ready until the 27th."

Half the room had thick, padded carpet, and the other half was polished hard wood. There were a few chairs and tables, but otherwise, it bore little resemblance to an actual indoor area. A large wooden swing set dominated the padded side, complete with one of those mini forts with a rock wall and a net in addition to the ladder to access it. Along one side of the padded floor, lines marked off distance, and stacked against the wall were a bunch of adjustable hurdles.

In a cage in the corner of the hardwood section were footballs, soccer balls basket balls, tennis balls, and basically every other kind of ball Owen could bring to mind. A pair of soccer nets and a rolled up volleyball net occupied a corner, and basketball hoops were mounted on both opposing walls. Four large bins lined the far side of the room.

"Whoa," Gray summed up.

"The velociraptors will be mobile very soon," Dr. Young continued. "Particularly if they see you running about and enjoying yourselves. Once they're moving around, some games of fetch and tag will help improve their reflexes. Tug-of-war will help grow muscles and improve jaw-strength. There are also a variety of chew toys, and these." She crossed to one of the bins and held up a little remote-control car.

"These are to help teach hunting skills," she explained. "The compartment where the driver's seat ought to be holds a small portion of food."

"Nice," Barry said thoughtfully, fishing another car and its remote out of the bin. "I call the Maserati."

"As always, make sure you are very careful with the dinosaurs," Dr. Young cautioned, but the kids were all nodding—they'd heard this reiterated a dozen times since the raptors had hatched.

"Walking on eggshells," Owen groaned. "Got it. Barry, let's check out the fort." The taller boy followed him quickly, not wanting to listen to any more 'don't hurt the baby dinosaurs' lectures.

 **A/N: I know the names are actually military letter code, but I liked the idea of the kids picking them, so I stretched things a little. Authorial prerogative, heh.**

 **Update on our search for the illusive fanfiction researcher: While we're making headway and picking up leads with everything we've got, hunting someone down to the ends of the earth is really expensive. Luckily, the Nottingham Corporation accepts reviews like cash.**

 **InGen needs YOU! To help save the world from a hungry rampaging dinosaur.**

 **Save lives—review!**


	5. Some Air

**A/N: Warning: velociraptors are carnivores. The stuff they eat used to be alive. If you are an avid fan of the Redwall series, by Brian Jacques, this chapter may possibly make you very, very sad.**

Some Air

It took exactly four days for Owen to go thoroughly and completely stir crazy.

The Rec Room was fantastic. He enjoyed goofing off with the other kids, especially since the adults didn't interfere except to bring meals and occasionally comment through the speakers. Everything was great—it wasn't the facility or the people.

It was just him.

Owen was unused to being inside for sustained lengths of time. He was that kid who'd climb out his gabled bedroom window to sit on the roof, or who'd wander aimlessly around the neighborhood for hours on end until his legs grew heavy and tired. Although they played plenty of sports in the Rec Room, it made him twitchy and nervous to stay indoors for so long. He was restless, and that restlessness was apparently affecting Blue as well. She couldn't settle herself to do anything either, and now that she could walk on her own, she'd taken to bobbing around the room, pausing to sniff at things, but never for very long before she resumed wandering about.

After the third or fourth time he'd asked, Dr. Young had agreed to let him go for a walk in the yard outside the lab, but once he was outside, the fences surrounding the property just made him feel more closed in. He could see the treetops over the concrete wall, through the fence on top. After wandering along it for a little while, he found a dumpster paddock built along the wall. He guessed it was constructed to keep dinosaurs _out_ , not to keep people _in_.

A push-up on the low end of the dumpster, a scramble up the slanted lid, a foot planted on the top of the wall, a leg swung over the fence, and he was outside—really outside. Albeit six feet off the ground, but he wasn't inside the wall any longer. He crouched down, getting ready to grab the top of the wall with his hands and lower himself to where he could drop to the ground, but he paused, suddenly thinking about Blue, and the way she'd been picking up on his mood.

Just because the outdoor enclosure wasn't ready didn't necessarily mean it would hurt anything to take her out on a little walk. It wasn't like he was going to go strolling through the park with her on a leash, scaring babies and taking pictures with tourists. She could ride on his shoulder. They wouldn't even go far.

He was back on the ground by the dumpster in just a few steps, running quietly back into the building and down the hallways. When he reached the Rec Room, instead of going through the main door, he headed to the boys' bathroom, which had an access door in the outer hallway. He crept across the smooth tiles, and cracked open the door an inch so he could see in without being seen.

Claire had Echo on her lap, and was swinging slowly on the swing set while she read her book. Barry and Gray were playing tennis—which meant tossing the ball at each other, trying and failing to hit it, and then watching Charlie and Delta race each other to grab the runaway ball and bring it back to whoever had tried to hit it. It took a second for Owen to find Blue, but when he saw her, he smirked. She was in the ball-cage, chewing determinedly on a football. She'd been contentedly stripping the meat from a large bone when he'd left—it was lying, clean and white, abandoned on a plastic tray.

Owen whistled a soft, low note—a sound that wouldn't be noticeable over Barry and Gray's lively banter. Delta and Charlie glanced at him briefly before deciding he wasn't as interesting as the tennis ball bouncing off towards the carpet. Blue, however, immediately hopped out of the ball cage and ran over to the door. She must've been really bored, Owen thought with a slight flash of guilt. She'd never come when he called before, if he didn't have food. After a cursory look around the room to make sure that no one was watching, he slid the door open a few more inches until Blue could slip through.

"Hey, Blue," he greeted her softly. "We're gonna go get some air." She chirruped a few times, and Owen quickly scooped her up, headed back outside.

After a few tense minutes of ducking around corners when he heard footsteps—since he was pretty sure his permission to go into the yard did not extend to the dinosaur sitting in the crook of his arm—he got back outside, and headed into the dumpster enclosure. Setting Blue on his shoulder, he waited a moment to make sure she was hanging on before climbing up and swinging over the fence.

The drop to the ground was a little jarring, but he didn't twist anything, so that made it a success. Blue made a series of happy little barks—goofy reptile loved any kind of jumping around—and then they were off, headed into the jungle.

Blue stayed on his shoulder, but she swiveled her head around every which way, watching birds fly from tree to tree, stalking insects with her eyes, and tapping the back of Owen's neck with her tail when she got bored. For his part, the human boy was just glad to be in the wide, sprawling wilderness, instead of the smooth, square building he'd been cooped up in for days. He walked away from the lab for a little while, glancing back every now and then to make sure that the flashing tip of the big cell-tower-looking-thing that stood beside it was still visible. Then he turned to his left and wandered that way, figuring he'd just make a big circle and then head back in. He knew he'd never get back inside without being noticed—may as well enjoy himself while he was out here.

After a little while, he found a clearing where the bright afternoon sun had warmed the knee-length grasses and released a gentle scent from the long, thin leaves. He sat down, and Blue hopped from his shoulder to his knee, and then to the ground, picking around through the plants and getting her bearings. A startled moth flew up from the grass, and Blue chased after it, jumping a few times to try and catch it in her teeth. Owen stayed alert in case she tried to go too far, but the clever moth put as much height between itself and the dinosaur's teeth as possible, and when it had ascended about six feet, Blue gave up and scurried back to Owen with a disappointed growl.

"Guess you're only used to hunting stuff with wheels," he laughed, but then Blue was off again, and a long squeak of terror was his only warning before she returned with a mouse struggling in her jaws.

"Um," he started uncertainly, "I dunno if you can eat those…" But apparently Blue knew her diet better than her human did. She pinned the struggling mouse beneath one clawed foot and bit its head clean off. Owen shuddered. "Gross," he grumbled, making a note that her teeth and jaws could now penetrate flesh. Luckily she hadn't tried to bite him since the first time. He'd need to watch where he left his fingers.

Blue finished her lunch, crowed triumphantly a few times, and Owen—having gotten over the initial shock—patted her head and laughed.

"Good job," he said. "You're gonna own when we get back and play 'hunt the hotweels' again." Blue warbled a little, and then sprawled out on Owen's leg, clearly intending to sun herself for a while. He picked her up, lay back, and set her on his chest, where she immediately shuffled around the material of his shirt until she had a bit of a nest before settling back down. Owen folded his arms behind his head and closed his eyes, not wanting to look into the sun, but not wanting to roll over and upset Blue either.

"Guess we'll both get some rays," he murmured. "Then we'll head back. Dr. Young's already gonna rip my head off over this. But I bet Dr. Wu will be excited that you hunted for real…"

-0-

"Where is Blue?"

Claire dragged her heels into the carpet to stop the swing's motion, and Echo hissed irritably at Dr. Young and the three men in ACU uniforms who, she correctly deduced, were the reason the ride had ended so abruptly.

"She's—" Gray started, pointing and looking at the ball cage before frowning and jogging over. "She was just here—taking a nap on a basketball."

"Probably went looking for Owen," Claire suggested. "He distracted her with food so he could mess around outside like a weirdo, but she finished it really fast and then ran around the room like she was looking for something. Where _is_ Owen, anyway? He's been gone for—" she glanced at the clock and did a double-take, "thirty minutes?"

"The camera monitor was fooling around on the internet, I bet," Barry snickered, and Dr. Young's furious look confirmed his train of thought.

-0-

When Owen awoke, deep rays of golden sunlight shone almost horizontally through the trees, illuminating dust motes and mosquitoes and gnats all drifting and flying through the air. In a panic, he looked at his watch—he'd slept two hours.

"Oh no," he groaned, sitting up, only to realize with a further pang of horror that Blue was no longer sitting on his chest. "Blue?" he called, looking wildly around. "BLUE!"

A rustle in the underbrush had him turning around so fast that he cracked his back. A moment later, a blue-streaked head popped up where he could see it, and blinked curiously at him.

"Blue," he sighed in relief. "Thank god. Come here, we gotta go." The raptor obligingly returned to him, climbing onto his shoulder as soon as he picked her up. He stood, brushing leaves and dirt off the back of his pants, and turned to go back the way he'd come. He would have to walk a little ways to get clear of a big hill that had blocked the red light of the cell tower from view.

Twenty minutes, a lot of jungle, and not one blinking light later, he had to admit that he was lost. Not a lot lost—he knew that the lab was somewhere to his right… and to the front… or maybe a little behind by now… or maybe they turned the blinking light off when the sun went down so the tourists wouldn't see evidence of the top secret velociraptor experiment lab… Okay, that one was silly. But the orange hues were fading out of the sky, replaced by deep royal blue, dotted occasionally by vivid pink clouds. And he still couldn't find the little flashing light.

-0-

"They've been missing for _over three hours!_ " Dr. Young snapped. She stood in Jurassic World's control room, frustration and anger snapping in the air around her like electricity. Although the park staff had only met her a few times, none of them were familiar with such intensity from the normally mild-mannered woman. " _Why_ haven't you found them yet?"

"We're doing everything we can," Hamada, the park director assured her grimly. "But if the child in question was leaving from your lab with the subject, he could have gone in any direction—and we only have cameras on the roads in that area. If he went through the jungle, there isn't a lot we can do."

Lowery and Viviane shared glances, the same unspoken question in the space between them that had run through the room in a hissing whisper when the behavioral scientist had first shouldered her way into the lab. _How the hell did a kid get into a research laboratory and steal a baby dinosaur in the first place?_

"Why doesn't your subject have a tracking implant?" Hamada asked, working hard to sound professional rather than annoyed that a non-exhibit animal had somehow been made his problem.

"It hatched less than a week ago," Dr. Young sighed in exasperation. "It's projected to go through several growth spurts in the next couple months—we didn't want to upset it by injecting and removing devices too often."

"'Upset it?'" Hamada repeated, raising an eyebrow. "You going to tell me what kind of dinosaur he stole?" He watched in fascination as the woman's throat actually bobbed, showing her gulp. A brief inner struggle contorted her face.

"It's a baby velociraptor," she finally admitted in a rush.

Although she hadn't spoken loudly, the whole room fell dead silent.

"There's a _kid_ out there _alone_ with a _velociraptor_?" Lowery whispered.

"Well, I mean," Dr. Young spluttered, backpedaling, "not like that. I mean, it's a baby. And it, she, knows him—she won't hurt him, she imprinted… it's complicated," she finally sighed, running a hand through her hair and wincing at all the eyes glued to her.

"Eyes on the cameras, everyone," Hamada murmured at last, wiping a bead of sweat from the back of his neck. "We have a kid to find."

 **A/N: Who remembers Katashi Hamada from the movie? Heh, he was an ACU guy. The leader of the ACU in this universe will be a test of your skills of observation—and I'll be taking creative license with the last name because it was never given in the movie. I'll give you a hint: "All his friends are animals."**

 **Now, on to the serious, life-and-death-y stuff! While we finally got the T-Rex under control, a new crisis has arisen. The intrepid reviewer Ddragon21 has captured several velocibunnies and evolved them into raptorabbits! Twice as sneaky, three times as fierce, and ten times hungrier. And to make things worse... (Hushed voice) They're breeding. The raptorabbits are *breeding.* Life found a way...**

 **Which of course means there's now a couple dozen of them to deal with.**

 **However, luckily for us, these modified critters still have the same aversion to eating people who review fanfiction! Isn't that a relief? Hurry, hit the review button! Don't think you're safe behind closed doors-these guys are smart. Smart enough to open doors. EVEN THE ONES WITH ROUND HANDLES! (Now THAT's scary!)**


	6. Can't Back Down

**A/N: Welcome to what I hope will become a long-running game of "Find the Guardians of the Galaxy Easter Eggs!" Hehe. Also, somebody brought to my attention that I (and by extension, IMDB, because that's where I got it) messed up Hamada's first name. It's Katashi, not Takashi. Oops! Thanks, Anon! I have updated the chapter to display the correct name.**

 **So far, nobody's gotten the "All his friends are animals" ACU leader… It IS a canon somebody from the Jurassic World movie universe. But it'll** _ **really**_ **test your powers of perception! Hint number two is "phone call."**

 **And without further ado, here's chapter six!**

Can't Back Down

Owen leaned against the window of the train, hunched over and curled up on himself, watching the inky black jungle fly by beneath him. His breath misted the glass, and he leaned his forehead against the cool material, straining his eyes to try and see ahead of the locomotive. A slight movement against the skin of his stomach signified that Blue was squirming around inside his T-shirt, which he'd tucked into his pants to provide her sort of a ledge to sit on, but which really restricted her movements.

"Shhh," he whispered soothingly, stroking what felt like her back. A few tiny sharp things poked against the skin covering his ribcage, revealing where she had one of her paws, although to her credit she hadn't punctured anything. He really hoped she'd keep that up. Being stabbed with the equivalent of a fork would be both painful and difficult to hide on a brightly-lit train full of people, while wearing a light blue shirt.

In hindsight, getting on the train with Blue in tow might not have been the best idea, but after stumbling around almost blind in the jungle for nearly an hour, when he'd spotted the elevated track, he'd almost fallen to his knees in relief. He had a general map of the island's major sectors on a brochure he'd received when they'd all gone to see the attractions that first day, and although he didn't have it on him, he remembered the basic outline. The train would make a stop at the Gyrosphere station—the Northernmost ride in the public part of the island. Then it would loop around and go south, dropping people off and picking them up until it reached the visitors' center. Then it would curve back up to the top of the loop.

Owen figured that if he could ride the circuit all the way around (because unfortunately the train only ran one way) he could go to the emergency station by the Gyrospheres and make up some story about how his dad worked on the ACU, and could they please phone him and tell him Owen got lost? If he remembered right, there was an Alex White on the ACU; nice enough guy, with sandy blonde hair and brown eyes. In a pinch, he could pass as related to Owen. Nobody outside the lab had to know there was a dinosaur involved, there wouldn't be a panic about an uncaged velociraptor, and maybe Dr. Young wouldn't personally murder him. Maybe.

However, he hadn't counted on how crowded the train would be at almost ten at night. All the live exhibits were closed down for the day, but there were theatres showing educational videos, actual roller-coasters, a Ferris wheel, and a couple of games in the fields where the herbivores grazed by day. Owen knew for a fact that these attractions stayed open until midnight—he and the other kids had dominated "Brave Heart: Dinos and Neanderthals Edition" and "Tyrannosaurus Watching," the first day they'd been on the island. That had been a Monday, however, and the train had been much emptier. A Saturday was quite a different story.

"We are now approaching the Visitors' Center," a cool female voice announced on the loudspeaker. "Those in the front of the train will be able to see the gates, crafted from materials used in the original park." A few excited children rushed forward to get a look, but Owen remained hunkered down in his seat. He watched as the scenery outside slowed to a stop, and a little crowd of people jostled each other for position as they prepared to board, only to have to part down the middle so that the disembarking passengers could shoulder their way off.

His eyes flickered to his watch. Nine-forty-five at night. Yep, he was dead meat for sure. He'd only meant to be gone a half hour at most, but in truth, he hadn't thought it through very well. He probably should've just stayed in the Rec Room, but it wasn't like beating himself up for stupidity was going to get him back any faster.

Just as he had that thought, the seat depressed beside him, and he realized that a group of kids had sat down in his portion of the train—and one of them was directly next to him. Immediately, he flicked his eyes shut, figuring he'd pretend to be asleep. People didn't bother sleeping folks on trains back home. Of course, he reasoned after a moment, given his age, people might assume he was an abandoned child or something, and try to talk to him, which would make hiding Blue pretty hard. He opened his eyes again, determinately not looking at the people chattering excitedly around him.

Blue shifted again, and he gently stroked her back through his T-shirt, hoping she'd fall asleep.

"Dude, _what_ do you have under there?" Owen cringed. Then he glanced over his shoulder at his neighbor, hoping desperately that the kid—a brunette boy of about ten or eleven—was talking to someone else, about something completely unrelated to dinosaurs.

The boy was staring straight at him, eyebrow raised. Of _course_ his luck wasn't that good.

"Stuffed animal," he muttered, unable to think of anything else to say. Then he looked away again, hoping the other kid would shrug off the antisocial sandy-haired boy and go back to talking with his friends about how much fun they were going to have creaming Team Neanderthal.

"You're carrying around a stuffed animal inside your clothes?" The boy laughed scornfully. "How old are you, anyway?"

"Six," Owen murmured, only lying by a year and a half, although he knew immediately that they weren't buying it. Most people thought he was eight or nine.

"Liar," the boy snapped. "Why are you carrying a stuffed animal around like you're a baby?"

"And why would you stick it down your shirt?" another kid demanded, twisting around in the seat in front of Owen so he could look down at the younger boy. "Weirdo."

"Okay," Owen shot back grumpily, heat rising in his face, "it isn't a stuffed animal—it's a bomb! Shut up, or I'll blow you to smithereens." Now he had the attention of five kids, all of whom burst out laughing.

"You do not have a _bomb_ ," the boy next to him sneered. "You're such a lousy fibber."

"Shut up!" Owen growled, but they were still laughing, and to his horror, the kid in front of him reached a hand down to try and grab at Blue through his shirt. "Get away!" He yelled, hitting the other boy's hand, only to have to fend off his neighbor when he did the same thing. Sudden sharp pricks near his ribs told him that Blue was getting upset. Another hand appeared over his left shoulder, and he swatted at it, earning a yelp of protest from its owner.

"Leave me alone!" He shouted, and some adult heads turned at that. Noticing they were being supervised, the other kids settled down with ill-grace and a few pointed comments. Owen wanted more than anything to get up right away and change seats, but he would have to climb over the brunette boy to do so, and he didn't trust him not to try and grab Blue again.

The claws withdrew, and to his surprise, he felt something warm and wet brushing against the tiny injury. It took him a minute to realize that she was licking the wound. He probably should've thought it was creepy, like she was developing a taste for human blood, but all it made him think of was the way he'd seen dogs trying to help each other when hurt. It only stung a little—she couldn't have done any serious damage. Perhaps this was her way of saying "it was an accident—sorry."

He resumed petting her back, trying to keep her settled. The boy in front of him saw, pointed, and snickered, but Owen filled his lungs with air like he was going to shout again, and the other kids satisfied themselves with laughing behind their hands a little.

He was still as red as the Texas Rangers hoodie of his that Blue had ruined and turned into her bed. The one piece of parental advice he'd ever gotten from his dad was this: "Never back down from a fight." Basically the only time he could remember his father looking proud of him was when he'd come home from school, bruised and covered in mud, and admitted that he'd fought with two other boys, bigger than he was. Of course, he'd been less proud when Owen had admitted they'd fought over the death of an innocent frog, but at least he knew his son wasn't a coward. And now, here he was, letting them talk to him like that— _clearly_ trying to pick a fight—without throwing a single punch in return. His heart sank into his stomach. _Coward_ …

The next twenty minutes were hellish. Dinos versus Neanderthals was held in the first Gyro Field after the herbivores had all returned to their paddocks for the night. That meant that the rowdy boys stayed on the train for the whole rest of Owen's journey. When the train finally, finally slowed to a stop, he bolted up out of his seat, and then stood impatiently waiting for the boy next to him to move so he could get off and get out of there. The boy, of course, took his sweet time, stuffing his phone ever so carefully into his pocket, stretching out, and laughing at a joke his friend told before swinging his legs into the now-crowded aisle and standing up.

While Owen and the irritating kids waited for the aisle to clear, the kid from behind him took another grab at the bulge over his stomach. Owen hit his hand again, harder this time, since it was next to him and not over his shoulder. The kid yelped again and glared at him balefully. As soon as Owen spotted a gap in the people that he thought he had a chance of fitting through, he scurried away, the laughter of the other kids ringing in his ears. _Coward_ …

Instead of heading directly into the emergency station, he slipped behind the building, untucking his shirt and pulling Blue out to let her get some air for a minute.

"Almost there," he murmured as she stretched and wriggled around, clearly glad to be outside the confines of her human's clothing. Owen took the opportunity to pull his shirt up and look at where she'd poked him with her claws. As he'd expected, there were two tiny red marks, neither of which were deep enough to still be bleeding. He sighed in relief, and then quickly stowed an indignant Blue away again when he heard footsteps behind him.

"Aww, is da widdle baby lost?" the obnoxious brunette boy crooned. "Can't even find the door to the lost-and-found!"

"Leave me alone," Owen groaned. He was so close to getting back to the lab and having this whole stupid thing over with…

"You hit me!" The boy who'd sat behind him snapped. "Twice!" He held up two fingers for emphasis.

"Wow," Owen hissed, unable to stop himself, "you can count all the way to two? That's amazing. I thought you were so much stupider than that!"

With a yell, the boy took a swing at him, but Owen's reflexes were quick, and he ducked, backing away instinctively. Unfortunately, he ran right into a third of the horrid boys, who grabbed his upper arm. The first attacker swung again, this time connecting with Owen's shoulder on the side his friend wasn't gripping.

"Ow!" Owen yelled, struggling in the other boy's grasp, and stomping on his foot, hard. The kid was big, but he'd worn flip-flops. Huge mistake. He released Owen and grabbed at his foot, howling in pain.

"Oh, you're gonna get it now," the brunette boy growled, and the phrase "bring it!" was on the tip of Owen's tongue. _Never back down from a fight_.

But then Blue squirmed, warbling in fear.

It was one thing for Owen to get into a fistfight with a couple of jerks and return bruised and bloody. That was a choice he could make—a choice he'd be happy to make, as angry as he was—but not with a baby dinosaur hiding in his shirt. He could take a few knocks, but she couldn't. And if she got hurt because of him making one more dumb mistake in a day full of dumb mistakes, he'd never forgive himself.

The brunette boy's fist connected with the side of Owen's face, but he'd already been gearing up to yell, so his roar of pain just added to his volume.

"HELP! SOMEBODY HELP ME! BEHIND THE BUILDING! HEEEEELP!"

Three men in security uniforms rounded the corner at a jog, and the three boys turned and dashed in the other direction around the building.

"Are you all right?" One of the security guards asked, while another radioed to someone, telling them to pick up three boys who were about to run around the front of the building.

"'M fine," Owen said shortly, hunching forward so they hopefully didn't see the telltale bulge under his shirt in the darkness. They had flashlights, but they were mostly using them to scan the area for further trouble. "Hey, I'm lost," he added after a minute. "My dad works here, but we got separated. Can you help me?"

"Owen Grady?" One of the security guards asked.

"Um, yeah," Owen admitted with a frown. "How'd you…?"

"Your aunt Zara's inside. She's been looking for you for hours," the guy explained. "Park security saw you on a camera and told her where you were headed."

"Oh," was Owen's lame response. He followed the guard into the security station, still stroking Blue, trying to keep her from making any loud noises or trying to get out of his shirt. As soon as they entered the well-lit room, a couple of people gave weird looks to the big irregular lump under his shirt, but a moment later, Zara Young was on her knees in front of him.

"There you are, Owen, I've been so worried," she exclaimed. Her eyes flickered to the bulge that was Blue, and she raised an eyebrow ever so slightly. Owen nodded, once, a tiny gesture that could've been a neck spasm. "Come on, now, let's get you back. Thank you again, officers," she added, and a couple of people nodded. Then she ushered Owen out of the building and into a plain black Jeep.

"Where the HELL have you been?" she snapped the moment the doors had shut, turning fiery eyes on the suddenly cowering child.

"I went for a walk," he explained quietly. He'd had plenty of time on the train to decide that he couldn't possibly think of a less incriminating lie than the simple truth. "I was just gonna go for a couple minutes, but I fell asleep. And then I got lost." He shrank down in his seat nervously. She wouldn't hit him while he was carrying Blue, would she? To be on the safe side, he untucked his shirt again, letting Blue crawl out onto his lap, away from his torso. Dr. Young's expression changed from angry to something else Owen couldn't identify—was is confusion? Suspicion?—and she sighed heavily.

Blue looked around for a moment, then—defying his attempt to protect her—scrambled up his shirt to sit on his shoulder, draping herself around the back of his neck so that her head was on his opposite shoulder. She blinked curiously at Dr. Young.

"The asset doesn't appear damaged," she admitted grumpily. "And clearly no one saw you—a dinosaur loose in the park would have been all over the internet by now. But if you _ever_ do _anything_ like that again—"

"I won't," he promised quickly. Zara turned the key and the engine roared to life.

"Are you hurt?" she asked after a moment. "Should I call a nurse?"

"No!" He exclaimed. "They were just stupid kids my age. I could'a taken 'em. Just…"

"Just, what?" Dr. Young asked when he fell silent.

"I didn't want Blue to get hurt," he admitted quietly. The little dinosaur hummed contentedly, curling up on his knee as he stroked her back.

"That's a good sign," Zara murmured, almost to herself.

 **Someone has made a few quips about how I "beg for reviews." (Someone I know outside the internet—fear not, I am not ragging on a reviewer!) I'd just like to state for the record that I haven't "begged" for reviews even once in this story. I've** _ **threatened**_ **. I threaten people with bodily harm and death by dinosaur. There is a pretty significant difference here.**

 **However, I've run out of good threats for the moment, and I'm not above borrowing ideas, so… (Gets down on knees, scoops adorable baby triceratops into lap to give the obligatory "puppy eyes.")**

 **Please, please review? For me? Please? Pretty please? With a cherry and a dinosaur-shaped cupcake-pick on top? Look at this adorable baby triceratops! She'll be so happy if you review! Please click that little button and stroke my ego? (Adorable Baby Triceratops's eyes get bigger and more soulful on cue.)**

 **There, now I have officially begged.**

 **(Feeds Adorable Baby Triceratops some tasty veggies.) Good job, kiddo. You might have a future in theatre…**

 **Oh, and, the games mentioned in this chapter are games I played at summer camp as a kid. However, I think they only exist at camp—I can't seem to find them on the internet! They don't really matter to the story at all, but if you're curious, I have a little summary of each in my profile.**


	7. Busted!

**A/N: Disclaimer: I know absolutely zilch about football. My only experience with the game was one time in my friend's back yard where they tried to explain the rules, we started to play, someone knocked me down, I** _ **didn't**_ **give them the ball, got** _ **right back up again**_ **and kept running. He shouted in frustration, "You're tackled! You're down!" To which I responded by informing him that I** _ **had been**_ **down, but had obviously gotten** _ **back up again**_ **, and was perfectly capable of** _ **punching any further attackers in the face**_ **and then** _ **blazing on past them.**_ **I couldn't understand why they thought I'd just sit there on the ground when I could just stand back up again and be an** _ **independent, aggressive woman**_ **… (At probably eight years of age.)**

 **Yeah, they all looked a little green after I was done talking, and wouldn't let me play any more after that. I wonder why?**

Busted!

"Please tell me this is some kind of dreadful joke," Simon Masrani murmured into the receiver, sinking further into his office chair and feeling the blood drain from his face.

"I wish it was, sir!" Hamada exclaimed helplessly. "But it's true. I went with Dr. Young to the emergency station and saw him myself; eight-year old kid with a dinosaur stuffed down his shirt. She said it was authorized, some kind of social experiment, but—"

"I never authorized her to use minors!" Masrani growled. "Thank you for bringing this to my attention, Katashi."

"Of course, Mr. Masrani," Katashi Hamada responded. Simon set the phone back down in its cradle and took a moment to bury his face in his hands. Of all the ridiculous, dangerous, unethical, highly illegal things to do—involving young children with velociraptors? Zara Young hadn't struck him as insane when she'd given her presentation, but he supposed one never could tell about people.

His phone rang again, and he picked it up with an uncharacteristically impatient "What?"

"Mr. Masrani?" Henry Wu's voice greeted him hesitantly. Simon paused and swallowed before responding.

"Dr. Wu," he said a little gruffly. True, this was Zara's project, but Henry had accepted it, suggested it to the board, was probably running it, and was the one who would benefit from it in the end. He had always had a fascination with raptors, even when he worked for Hammond at Jurassic Park.

"I take it you've been made aware of last night's incident," Henry said calmly. It was that cool, assured tone that calmed Simon down a few notches. That was not the voice of a man who'd been caught in wrongdoing. That was the voice of someone who had a perfectly legitimate explanation. Of course, there was always the possibility he was going to lie through his teeth to protect himself, but Simon nodded to himself, deciding that he'd at least give him the chance to explain before he pulled the plug on the project. There had to be some good reason Henry thought the kids would be safe.

"I believe," he began slowly, "you owe me a very detailed explanation. And an in-depth tour of your project."

-0-

If the scientist hadn't told Owen that velociraptors were fast learners, he would've figured it out for himself today. When the reptiles had all congregated beneath a heat lamp affixed to the bottom of the fort, the kids had decided to play touch football (Claire had flat out refused to play if they were tackling). Although it was awkward trying to play with only two-on two, they had a pretty good time.

After about thirty minutes, however, Gray had called their attention to the edge of the wood section. All four raptors were in a line, watching intently.

"I think they want to play," Gray said with a shrug.

"Can dinosaurs play football?" Claire asked dubiously.

"If we use a smaller ball they can grab in their mouths, probably," Barry responded thoughtfully, running over to the ball cage and digging through until he found a miniature Nerf football. "Here, this won't pop if they bite it."

"Guess this'll be a first," Owen commented with a laugh, and then massaged his jaw. The kid last night had packed a serious wallop. Luckily, Dr. Young seemed to think he'd been punished enough after stumbling around a dark jungle and then getting beaten up by some idiots. When he'd first returned to the lab, Dr. Young had addressed him and the others, informing them that the next time something like this happened, the offender would be sent _straight home_ without the promised fee. He wondered if she knew exactly how grave a threat that really was—certainly enough incentive for him to toe the line. Other than that, he hadn't had to deal with any extra repercussions from his day of stupidity. He had noticed that there was now a camera on the corner of the building by the dumpster enclosure, though.

-0-

"I understand," Zara breathed, trepidation twisting through her stomach, and then hung up the phone and took a moment to breathe before heading down to the Rec Room at a power-walk. Wu had just informed her that he was on his way over to the lab—with Mr. Masrani. Mentally cursing Owen Grady's inability to stay put and behave, she sped up a little, jogging down a long hallway. She was supposed to have had more time with them before corporate got involved, but of course that weasel Hamada had opened his big mouth.

Pulling her radio out of her pocket, she switched it to the ACU's frequency.

"Dr. Young to Alex White," she said, and then released the "talk" button.

"Copy," the man replied after a moment of static.

"Corporate inspection," she explained curtly. "Have your standby team cover the entrances." Each Asset Containment shift was divided in half—half of the troopers covered major entrances while the other half hung back in the guardroom, waiting on a call. She didn't want too many guards stifling the kids or the raptors. Making them nervous, making them feel like prisoners, wasn't going to help anything.

"Roger that," Peterson responded. Zara stuffed the radio back in her pocket.

They had large cages in a storage area near the Rec Room, although they hadn't yet had to use them. Given the way the dinosaurs had interacted with the children, she'd been certain that the kids weren't yet in any danger. Privately, she didn't believe they'd ever be strictly necessary—not if her hypothesis was proved correct. She'd had them made for the once-a-month Parent Day she'd planned when they started the project. But when Masrani came to inspect their safety precautions, the carnivores really needed to have bars between them and the humans.

Zara took a moment to collect herself before she pushed open the door to the Rec Room. There was no reason to alarm them. However, she paused in the doorway, taking in the sight before her. What were they…?

-0-

"So now we're Team Cretaceous: 7, Team Jurassic: 12. I think," Gray announced as they set the ball back on the "kickoff tee"—a repurposed gym towel wadded up into a little nest for the ball.

"C'mon, guys," Owen exclaimed to Blue, Claire and Echo. "We can close that gap."

"In your dreams!" Barry laughed, pounding the air with his fists. Charlie crowed triumphantly, although it was anyone's guess whether or not she understood that her team was in the lead. Claire wiggled her toes around in her too-tight shoes, and Owen winced in sympathy. She really needed new ones…

"Hey, Dr. Young," Gray greeted the British woman when he spotted her standing by the door. The other kids and dinosaurs all looked over.

"Hello," Dr. Young responded in a quiet, stressed voice. "I didn't know dinosaurs could play football. Did you just teach them today?"

"Well, touch football," Barry corrected. "And we didn't teach them. They just saw us doing it and then hopped in."

"How long did that take?" She let the door fall shut behind her and advanced a few steps into the room, keeping close to the wall.

"Um, a half hour?" Claire responded after considering for a moment. "Maybe a little more."

The psychologist appeared to struggle with herself for a moment. Then she slowly sat down on a chair by the wall.

"Would you like a scorekeeper?" she asked.

It was a huge gamble. But… this _was_ Simon Masrani they were talking about.

-0-

"Welcome to Project Symbiosis," Henry Wu announced in a cool, even voice as he opened the doors to the main laboratory. Although there were scientists and computers and charts, the major eye-draw in the room was the massive view-screen covering almost half of one wall.

"My god," Masrani murmured as he walked forward, eyes glued to the screen. "This is live?"

Frankly, Henry's sentiments were approximately the same, with an added flash of irritation. This was _not_ the plan. But he rolled with it, stepping up level with his boss and smiling fondly at the kids and the dinosaurs engaging in a lively game of tag-football, as far as he could tell.

"Yes, sir," he responded proudly. "They're astonishingly fast learners. And their bond with the children is developing far more easily than we ever expected."

"Have they ever hurt any of the children? Shown any aggression towards them?"

"Never once," Henry lied smoothly. "They would never harm a member of their pack."

-0-

"Team Cretaceous: 14," Zara announced. "Team Jurassic: 16."

"Two points, two lousy points," Owen exclaimed. "C'mon, guys, we got this!"

"We don't 'got' this," Claire sighed in irritation. She'd been running around for over an hour now, and her feet _hurt_. It didn't usually bother her, if she sat more than she walked, but activity seemed to make her feet swell, and they throbbed with every step. She glowered at Owen. He was competitive, she got that—so was she. But at that moment, she really just wanted the game to be over so she could go back on the swings and read her book.

"Huddle," Owen announced shortly. She rolled her eyes, walking over to him. The raptors chittered among themselves for a moment before following their humans.

"Here, put these on," he said, kicking off his shoes.

"What?" Claire asked, surprised. Owen pushed his shoes towards her a few inches with a nudge of his toe.

"We're only losing because of those ridiculous too-small shoes," he said with a shrug. "I think mine are only a little bigger—put 'em on."

"Whose shoes are you gonna wear?" she asked, eying the worn-out sneakers thoughtfully. They did look like they'd about fit her…

"I used to play this barefoot back home all the time," he laughed. "I have really tough feet. Don't worry—just put 'em on."

Claire toed her shoes off, and Owen pulled off his socks and tossed them to the side while she tied on his sneakers. She tapped her heels experimentally against the floor a few times. They _did_ fit. They were hot and sweaty and probably had boy cooties.

They were fantastic.

"Now," Owen announced louder, "we are so going to own this thing!" Echo and Blue both trumpeted a few staccato calls, and the huddle broke apart, ready to face the other team. Owen made eye-contact with Dr. Young, who raised an eyebrow.

' _Later,_ ' he mouthed. "We ready?"

"Waiting on you!" Barry called back.

-0-

"So, what do you think so far?" Dr. Young asked as she entered the lab twenty minute later to find Simon and Henry sitting on high stools on either side of a counter, alternately watching the kids—who had adjourned to the swing-set after Team Cretaceous had scraped a win—and pouring over some charts.

"I think it's unorthodox," Simon responded flatly. "I think it's dangerous, and crazy. I think it's brilliant—possibly the most incredible thing I've ever seen."

"Thank you, sir," Zara said with a smile.

-0-

"You could've said something about your shoes earlier," Barry grumbled. Now that the truth was out, he felt like he'd gloated unfairly, and it bothered him pretty profoundly.

"I didn't think it was a problem, until suddenly it was," Claire admitted. "They don't usually bother me, but when they do, they _really_ do. But Dr. Young says they're going to get me new ones, so, that's pretty awesome. Thanks, by the way," she added, looking at Owen. "You're really observant, you know that?"

"I wouldn't say that," he said with feigned modesty. "I mean, people say it _about_ me, all the time, but it's not something I'd say about myself…" Claire rolled her eyes and gave him a playful shove.

Just then, a bang like a gunshot reverberated through the room, and there was a panicked screech before a blue-and green blur streaked up the ladder and scrambled up into Owen's shirt, leaning against him and trembling in terror. The kids all looked wildly around for the source of the noise while the other three raptors huddled against the walls of the fort, glancing uncertainly at the humans, and the shaking bulge of gray fabric and twitching tail that was all they could see of blue.

"Looks like she popped that basketball she's been chewing on," Barry finally announced, spotting the orange rags lying in a heap on the floor.

There was a pause where no one said anything, and Owen stroked Blue's back soothingly. Then all the humans burst out laughing uproariously.

"It's okay, girl," Owen chuckled. "It wasn't a bomb, and it's not going to eat you."

"That was great," Gray choked out when he could finally breathe again.

-0-

"Well it _should've_ been a setback," Henry explained, leaning back in his chair to relax after his remarkably stressful day, "but it ended up being a blessing in disguise. Thanks to an impromptu lesson in football, of all things, Simon is now on board with the project, and none the wiser about the plan."

"You taught them to play football? If they're that clever, shouldn't they be doing some kind of training?"

"Well, they are," Henry responded. "They're learning to imitate their humans. They're learning to follow instructions—operate inside of rules. And they're learning to work as a team to accomplish a goal." There was a long moment of silence.

"Now _that_ , Dr. Wu, is something we can use."

 **A/N: I've revealed the ACU leader… Who remembers him? Hint three: bachelor party!**

 **So, when my company was hunting down the mysterious fanfic researcher, we discovered a disturbing fact: Dennis Nedry's last act on his computer was to create a terrible virus that will make any computer display a bobble-head of him saying "Ah-ah-ah! You didn't say the magic word!" in a really annoying voice, to the exclusion of all else, for anywhere from 6 months to 18 years. However, my company has their thumb on the pulse of the world; they have already created a firewall that will block this terrible horrible virus. To download this free firewall and protect your computer from this dreadfully inconvenient gif, simply type some text in the review box below and hit "submit!"**

 **My condolences to CrazyFM who was eaten after Chapter 2... The rest of you, BE YE WARNED! Many thanks to CrazyFM's ghost for taking the time to review despite being eaten-that's gotta be rough. You have my respect.**


	8. Schoolhouse Rocks

Schoolhouse Rocks

"Finally!" Claire whispered happily when she awoke and realized it was the day they all officially started school on the island. She sat up, glancing for what had to be the hundredth time at the shiny new pile of books, notebooks and various other school supplies carefully stacked on her nightstand. Echo gave a sleepy little murmur and rolled over so the blankets covered her again. Although she'd jumped on the bandwagon last week when Blue had demonstrated the relative merits of climbing out of her incubator and using Owen as a nighttime heat source instead, she, like Claire, disliked being woken up too early.

Two days after Owen and Blue's ill-fated adventure, Claire had opened her eyes in the morning, glanced around the room, and experienced a moment of silent panic when she saw only three velociraptors in their incubators. However, a closer inspection showed a blue and green tail poking out from the covers on Owen's bed.

Two more nights passed before Owen stopped trying to put her in the warm box, and just let her crawl straight into bed with him. The next day, Charlie and Echo had done the same, and the day after that, Delta followed suit. Now the incubators were stacked in the corner by the refrigerator, and the tables were used to hold alarm clocks, water bottles, books, flashlights, and various other paraphernalia that Dr. Young had purchased for her charges.

"Nerd," Owen groaned half-heartedly as he tossed bits of pork up in the air for Blue to catch in her mouth. "Only _you_ would get this excited about _school_."

"Don't judge it based on school in the U.S.," she cautioned, getting out of bed and flipping the covers back over a sleepy, indignant Echo. "We're living in Jurassic World, and they're doing everything so the raptors can do it with us. Keep an open mind."

"I guess it _could_ be okay," Gray said doubtfully, then gulped down the rest of his orange juice with a loud slurp that said he wasn't so sure about that. "But," he added hopefully, "maybe they'll just teach us a lot of dinosaur stuff! That'd be really cool…"

"Exactly!" Claire responded with a grin, fishing some clean clothes out of the shopping bags near her bed and heading for her bathroom. That was the best thing about being the only girl living with three boys—the ladies' room was her own private bathroom.

"She's just happy that she gets new books, 'cause she read all the ones she brought with already," Owen grumbled, flicking two scraps of meat in different directions and watching Blue snag both before they could hit the floor.

"Probably," Gray agreed with a laugh, his eyes following Delta and Charlie as they playfully wrestled across the floor. "And new clothes. It was nice of Dr. Young to buy us all school clothes, though," he added. The shower in the boys' bathroom shut off, and a few minutes later, Barry emerged.

"Anybody have scissors?" he asked, holding out the tag on the shirt he was wearing.

"Here, kneel down," Owen said, a wide grin spreading across his face. "Lemmie show you something." Barry frowned, but complied.

"Blue, slice," Owen said, making a hook out of his index finger and miming cutting through something.

"Seriously?" Barry asked with trepidation, but Owen leaned over and tapped the taut plastic wire that held on the tag, and Blue hooked her claw around it and pulled. With a faint "pop!" of protest, the wire split, freeing the tag.

"Cool!" Gray exclaimed.

"I think they need a scratching post, though," Owen said, gently taking Blue's fore claw between his fingers. "These aren't very sharp, and the only things in here they can comfortably claw up are the mattresses." The side of Barry's bed had a long gash and a bunch of shallow scratch-marks giving evidence to this.

At nine o'clock sharp, four children and four velociraptors arrived at the door that Dr. Young had referred to as "The School Room."

"Welcome to the torture chamber," Owen muttered. Claire sighed huffily and glared at him for a moment before pushing open the door.

Which led directly outside.

Well, not quite _outside_ , outside. It wasn't a room so much as a massive screened-in deck, with lawn chairs, folding tables, and a pile of bean bags in one corner. There was a projector mounted to the ceiling—a checkerboard of glass panels and wood squares—and bamboo blinds rolled up over each screened window. A large whiteboard hung on one "wall," and the sanded wood floor had two odd lines of dark, smooth material making a T-shape that divided the whiteboard-and-projector-screen side of the room from the rest, and separated the rest into two equal halves. Owen made a point to step on the material as he walked in, and it shifted very slightly.

"Retractable walls," Gray figured out a moment later, looking down at the same thing. "So when the raptors get bigger, the teacher can be up front, we can be on one side, and they can be on another."

"You're quite right," an unfamiliar voice agreed, and eight heads turned to see a tall, pale brunette man enter the room. "I'm Zachary Robinson," he introduced himself, walking to the front of the room and setting a folded laptop down on a table. "But you can call me 'Mr. Z.' I'll be your school teacher this semester."

"You do realize I'm just going to stare out this ginormous window all day, right?" Owen quipped, walking further into the room and looking at all the beautiful, inviting jungle he could see through the screens.

"Glad you mentioned it," Mr. Z responded, grabbing a little remote from the whiteboard ledge and hitting a button. The side wall—furthest from the building—split down the center, and slid open with a hum of machinery. "Everybody, this is one of the entrances to the velociraptor paddock. Since they—with the exception of one—have never been outdoors, we will be using this 'halfway-out' environment to help them grow accustomed to it." He hit the button again and the wall slid back shut.

"However, they had some delays in construction, so it will be another week or two before you can actually explore the area." Barry snapped his fingers in annoyance.

"Now," Mr. Z continued, clapping his hands and rubbing them together, "There are chairs, tables, beanbags, pet cushions, random carpet squares, whatever those things are called," he listed pointing at various bits of furniture around the room. "Pick something, sit down, and get comfortable. But not too comfortable—we're going to kind of alternate between paper stuff and moving around stuff so the dinosaurs don't fall asleep on us. Of course, the humans wouldn't _dream_ of getting bored in my class, I know…"

Owen wasn't the only one who snickered. He dragged a beanbag a few feet from the wall and plunked down on it. Blue scrambled up and took her preferred spot on his shoulder, wrapping her tail around his neck for stability. Gray was being smart, and decided that the table Mr. Z had mentioned counted as a seating option, and Charlie was curled up on his knee. Claire, predictably, chose a lawn-chair, which she angled straight up-and-down, and a little coffee table where she could write and stack her books. She grabbed a cushion and set it next to her chair for Echo, but Echo dragged it under the coffee table before sitting on it.

"Aww yeah," Barry murmured, when a further inspection of 'whatever those things are called' revealed them to be folded up bungee chairs. He set one up between Claire and Owen, and flopped into it. Delta had hopped up next to Echo to share her little makeshift table-fort.

Mr. Z didn't even bat an eyelash.

"Okay, guys," he said, flipping open his laptop and firing up the projector. "Let's get learning."

' _Okay_ ,' Owen admitted to himself with a quiet snort. _'I_ guess _I could like this guy.'_

Mr. Z began each day with a list of subjects that he wrote on the board, but the kids could take turns picking which one came next. If nobody wanted to pick one, he'd have them roll dice. For science, as Gray had hoped, they did talk about dinosaurs a lot—he even introduced them to a simplified version of genetics, saying that even though they wouldn't really study it until high school, it was a waste not to talk about it when they were on the same island with the most advanced genetics lab in the world. For reading, he'd have them take turns reading out loud, saying that it was beneficial for them as students, and for the dinosaurs to hear their voices.

For history, he had them act out funny little plays he'd written, or he'd tell them about the historical figures like he was telling a story. For math, he had set up several homemade board games to help them learn multiplication, and taught them a hand-trick for multiplying by nine. Although Owen had always hated math, the games excited his competitive streak, and he found himself grudgingly understanding the facts.

In between each subject, there would be something that involved getting up and moving, from simple things like playing a quick round of fetch to more complicated things like yoga stretches, creating and using a bow-drill to make a fire, or hunting exercises for the raptors. He had them memorize dozens of plants by their color and shape, giving them funny little pneumonics and sayings to keep the names straight. He had them finger-paint a gigantic timeline of significant historical events—an activity that Claire had been surprisingly good at, Owen had observed, considering how he'd expected her to react to the idea of having paint all over her hands.

The giant green handprint wiped across the front of his shirt adequately expressed her opinion of _that_ comment. At least the green had washed out of his hair…

But things got really interesting when they began to realize just how much the _velociraptors_ were learning.

It started with Charlie. Gray was doing his homework, counting on his fingers and muttering the numbers as he went. Charlie gave a little crow every time Gray lifted another finger, and he laughed, and patted her head.

"I'll play with you in a minute," he said. "Just gotta finish this. Let's see… four… plus…" Charlie crowed four times. Gray laughed again. "You helping? Four plus seven…" He held up the four fingers and counted off seven more, winding up with a fist and his index finger sticking up. Charlie crowed four times again, then paused, then crowed seven times.

"Gray…" Owen said slowly. "Did she just…?" Gray looked up at him, not comprehending. Then his eyes widened.

"Six," he said, very clearly. Charlie just blinked at him. Gray held up six fingers. "Six," he tried again. Immediately, Charlie crowed six times.

"No _way_!" Claire whispered, watching over the top of her copy of The Hobbit.

" _Please_ tell me you did not teach her math," Barry groaned. "You might break the universe…"

"I didn't teach her, she just started doing it! Three." Charlie blinked and cocked her head to the side. "Three," Gray continued, holding up three fingers. Charlie responded with three crows.

"So she doesn't know the names of the numbers, but she can count objects," Claire murmured. "That's fascinating."

After several attempts—because how do you tell a dinosaur that you want to test their math skills?—they discovered that Blue could also identify numbers, but Delta and Echo either couldn't or wouldn't.

"It's because Barry and I don't count on our fingers," Claire explained. "I do it in my head, and he sometimes taps his leg—much more subtle. Delta and Echo pay more attention to us than they do to you two."

Mr. Z agreed with Claire's assessment, and was properly impressed by Charlie's counting skills, although Blue opted to take a nap instead of show off when Owen started wiggling his fingers at her.

"Well, she has no incentive," Mr. Z said with a shrug.

The next morning, the floor of the school room had been transformed into a gigantic maze with plywood walls two inches thick and two feet high. Except for the first eight inches of the entry tunnel, the whole thing was lidded, with holes drilled at even intervals for light and air, so that the raptors in the children's arms couldn't see the pattern.

"Today, at the request of several very impressed people in white lab coats, we're going to do a classic animal intelligence test," Mr. Z announced, holding up a plate full of meat. All four velociraptors stared greedily at it. "Behold—incentive."

"Nice," Gray said with a nod.

"Heh, you have to take your first test before I do," Barry laughed. Mr. Z took a handful of meat, set it on a smaller plate, showed it around until each raptor was following it with their eyes, and then slowly and deliberately set it on his end of the maze.

Claire knelt down by the entrance, holding Echo, who was already wriggling around, trying to get out of her arms.

"Don't release her until I say—I've gotta start my stopwatch," Mr. Z cautioned. He pulled off the plastic glove he'd been using to handle the wet, raw meat, and tossed it in the trash can. "And as soon as she goes in, use that piece over there to block the entrance. We don't want the other three getting lose and running in there." Claire nodded, and Mr. Z hit a few buttons on his watch. "Ready? Go!" Claire released Echo, and Owen slid the piece of wood into the grove made for it, closing the door, so to speak.

For a few seconds all they heard were claws clicking on wood. Then Echo started calling out in annoyance. The other raptors began chittering as well. The humans listened to Echo's claws and voice go to first one side of the maze, then the other. She doubled back, then swerved left, breaking into a sprint. A moment later, Mr. Z was stopping his watch, and Echo's voice stopped—her mouth was full of her reward.

"One minute, twelve and a half seconds," he announced. "Let's see if anybody can beat that."

"Charlie's turn," Gray said, sliding up the door while Claire retrieved Echo. Mr. Z replaced the meat, discarded another meaty glove, and hit the button on his watch. Charlie ran the maze in silence, other than her claw-clicks, but Echo on the other side crowed and chortled practically non-stop. Blue and Delta also didn't make a peep.

"Thirty-seven and a quarter seconds," Mr. Z read out in surprise, reaching over to his laptop and playing back an infrared video of Delta's path through the maze.

"Not even one wrong turn?" Claire noticed in surprise. Mr. Z nodded incredulously.

"Echo was giving her directions," Gray realized quietly. Everyone looked at him. "You said that one of the most incredible things about raptors is how well they communicate, right? They can talk to each other almost the same as humans? Echo did the maze, and the others listened and told her where she was when she asked for help. Then she told Charlie how to do it."

"Sounds like we're gonna have to change the rules, if you're right," Mr. Z responded after letting that sink in. He slipped into another glove—he had a whole box of the silly things—and stuck more food onto the plate that both Echo and Charlie had licked clean. "But let's see if it holds true for the others. Blue, you're up."

Gray grabbed Charlie and carried her back to the other side of the room, and Owen knelt down by the door to the maze. Barry knelt next to him, ready for a pretty quick turnaround. Blue and Delta chittered and crowed to each other while Mr. Z reset his watch, and Owen lifted up the door.

"Ready? Go!" Mr. Z exclaimed, and Owen released Blue. At the same moment, Delta wiggled free of Barry, and both raptors gave almighty leaps, landing on the roof of the maze and sprinting over to the other side.

There was a long moment in which the only sound was little dinosaur mouths chewing delicious raw beef. Then Owen burst out laughing, Mr. Z groaned and face-palmed, and Claire protested, "That's cheating!"

"That's thinking outside the box!" Barry corrected her triumphantly as he stood up to go bring Delta back.

"Work smart, not hard," Owen said with a shrug. Claire ran a hand through her hair and made a fist in irritation, which only added to Owen's amusement. By the time he'd walked around the maze, Delta and Blue had licked the plate clean and Delta was looking expectantly up at Mr. Z, expecting more. Blue had trotted over to the corner and had leapt into the trash can.

"Don't dumpster-dive, Blue," Owen groaned. "Paper can't possibly taste good." The raptor looked up at his voice, Mr. Z's bloody glove hanging halfway out of her mouth. "Oh, seriously? You can't be that desperate—BLUE, DROP IT, SPIT IT OUT, NOW!"

It had hit him in the middle of his sentence; babies, plastic, choking hazard. Blue shifted back, surprised to hear him shouting. He grabbed the free end of the glove and pulled, but Blue was good at tug-of-war and wouldn't let go.

"Drop it!" He exclaimed, pointing to the ground and pulling on the glove as hard as he dared—if it ripped, she might swallow what was in her mouth. "DROP. IT." He pointed at the ground again, forcefully, as if he was trying to stab his finger through something. Blue let out an indignant crow, and Owen took the opportunity to quickly remove the glove from Blue's mouth, slipping the fingers of his free hand under her upper jaw to hold it open while he quickly scanned for any plastic shreds.

She hissed at him, struggling a little, and her teeth grazed his fingers painfully on both sides as she tried to close her mouth. For an instant, as adrenaline and fear flooded through Owen, he remembered that she could bite through small bones now. He swallowed, took a breath, and held up two fingers. She looked at him quizzically.

"Two," he breathed, hoping she wouldn't be contrary today.

She thought about it for a moment, then opened her mouth further to crow twice.

Owen whipped his fingers out as soon as she released them. They were bleeding, but at least they were still attached. He was breathing like he'd just run across the lab, and Blue was grumbling uneasily, but they weren't quite out of the woods. There were two more bloody gloves in the can—she couldn't stay in there.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he registered that the door had opened behind him, but he set that piece of information aside before slowly lowering both of his hands into the plastic can, and carefully wrapping around Blue's sides. He sighed in relief when she didn't snap at him. He pulled her into his lap and turned sort of sideways, angling her away from the trash can.

Someone—a kid-sized Caucasian hand, so neither Barry nor Mr. Z—grabbed the trash can and removed it from sight. Blue warbled, and tipped her head to the side—she wasn't aggressive, just confused. He set her on his lap and released her, hesitantly, and she stayed put, looking up at him. If a velociraptor could frown, she would have.

"Just back off, let him handle it!" That was Claire's voice, and suddenly Owen became aware that there were a _lot_ of people behind him. And buzzing sounds. And then Blue was scrambling up his shoulder, hissing violently, fore-claws out, tail lashing.

Owen's brain caught up with his senses, and he bolted to his feet, whirling on his heel to face a room full of black clad ACU guys brandishing stun guns. Blue pivoted on his shoulder so she was facing the threat, still hissing. He wouldn't realize until later that she'd kept her retractable middle claws pulled back, not digging them into his shoulder.

"Stand down," Mr. Z was saying, his hands raised placatingly. He'd said it once already, Owen thought, although he couldn't be sure. Claire was also between him and the uniformed goons. Of _course_ , he thought in irritation, _now_ they swarmed in to the rescue.

"Back off!" Dr. Young yelled, entering the room at a run and shouldering her way to the front of the crowd. "What happened?"

"I had to stop Blue from choking on plastic," Owen said shortly. Dr. Young turned to look at him, then at Blue.

"Calm her down," she said, then turned to glare impressively at the ACU men. "Get out of here. You put a hundred-twenty amps into her now, she'll never trust humans again."

"Stand down, Blue," Owen said, holding up his hand with his palm towards her, imitating Mr. Z for lack of a better idea. The only thing that was going to make her calm down was when all the commotion died down. But her eyes strayed to the cuts on his fingers, and although her tail remained pointed back aggressively, she stopped hissing, and leaned forward, licking away the blood like she had the last time. After a moment, she let out a stressed note. When the sound died, Owen realized the room had fallen silent again, and a great many eyes were on him.

"She's saying she's sorry for hurting me," he mumbled, suddenly self-conscious. "It was an accident—I stuck my hand in her mouth. Don't shoot her. Please," he added awkwardly.

"You sure you're all right?" a trooper whose name he didn't know asked.

"Positive," Owen responded without pausing. "But I think you're scaring her."

"You heard him," Dr. Young added. "He's fine—you can all go back to your posts."

The ACU troopers turned and left the room at a nod from one of them—the shift leader, apparently—and closed the door behind them.

"Naturally this would happen on White's day off," she sighed, and then turned to Owen.

"Do you need a nurse?" she asked more quietly. He shook his head, inspecting his hand more closely.

"Just some Band-Aids," he requested.

The rest of the day was amazingly uneventful, after that, and the children retired to their room in uncharacteristic silence. Blue had draped herself around Owen's neck around lunch time and refused to budge, so that evening, he lay on his stomach on his bed with her tail-tip poking at the pillow. That morning, Blue had almost died, and then had almost been attacked and electrocuted. He felt emotionally drained, and no matter how hard he stared at the biology word-search, he couldn't make himself focus on it. He growled in frustration, his fingers curling inward like claws. Then he sighed, and picked the paper up to look at it from another angle.

Recognizing the signal he'd been trying to teach her, and noticing and interpreting his aggression, Blue stood up and in one fluid motion extended one of her sickle-shaped claws and sliced the homework paper right down the middle.

Owen blinked in surprise, staring at the two halves of his homework. Blue crowed triumphantly. Then the boy laughed, setting the paper aside and sitting up, pulling Blue into his lap. She gave a series of short, bark-like crows, pleased with herself. Owen leaned down until his forehead touched hers.

"I guess you really do learn," he murmured, "when you feel like it. Guess we have that in common."

 **A/N: Since Gray's last name is Mitchell, and he and Zach aren't related in this AU, I used the actor's last name for Mr. Z. But it mostly won't matter, since he goes by, well, Mr. Z.**

 **His whole "sit wherever you want, including the table" thing is based off of my college Creative Writing teacher. He was always late, so the students started pranking him by putting a desk on top of his desk, then two desks, then having people sitting in desks on top of desks, then having students sitting on top of tables (there were tables down one wall and regular school desks around the rest of the room) and having people sitting on the filing cabinets, stealing his desk and putting it against the back wall, turning the entire classroom sideways… It really escalated. And he thought it was hilarious, and let us keep it that way through the class period as long as we put everything back at the end.**

 **Mr. Z's teaching style is very homeschool-ey; my mom got out her homeschool planners from when I was little and we glanced through them to see what I was learning, and then I looked up occasionally and asked her, "how'd you teach thus-and-so again?"**

 **And for those of you involved in my guessing game, in** _ **Jurassic World**_ **, Zara loses Gray and Zach because she's on the phone, saying to someone, "Of course Alex isn't having a bachelor party—all his friends are animals!" So Assistant!Zara's fiancée is the leader of the ACU in** _ **Brother, Mine**_ **. He and Dr. Young have only met in the work environment, as of yet.**


	9. Exploring

**A/N: 6:00am shifts are exhausting, physically and mentally... TT_TT Here's some cute raptor fluff and dark musings. (Those go together, right? Haha.)  
**

Exploring

"Should we stop them?"

"Nah, let 'em try. They'll just do it again later if we don't let them do it now."

"But, do you think they can open it? What if they can?"

Owen rolled onto his side, blinking owlishly as Barry and Gray's conversation woke him from a light snooze-button doze. The other two boys were sitting on their beds, watching in amusement as Delta attempted to climb up on Charlie and Blue's backs, to reach the latch for the industrial refrigerator. She slipped off of Charlie, her claws sliding across her sister's smooth scales, but Blue ducked sideways and forward, supporting her before she could hit the floor.

"Teamwork, huh?" Owen yawned, and all three raptors glanced at him briefly before turning back to their task.

"I don't think they can get it open," Barry said with a shrug.

"I bet you my desert at lunch, they totally can," Gray responded with confidence.

"You're on," Barry laughed. "I can taste two brownies already."

"I wouldn't be so sure about that," Owen commented, nodding towards the dinosaurs. Delta had one foot on blue's back and one foot on Charlie's, with her tail flipping from side to side to help her keep balance.

"No. Way." Barry said quietly as she extended her neck, crouched low, took a flying leap, and clamped her teeth around the latch.

"Yes way!" Gray exclaimed as Delta pulled, the refrigerator door swung open, and the other two quickly backed off from the sheet of metal attempting to whack them in the snout. Delta clung on grimly, scrabbling her legs against the smooth unforgiving surface before keening out a long, panicked call for help and looking pleadingly at Barry.

"Seriously, Delta?" Barry groaned, but got up and picked up his raptor before she could fall. She warbled a little, probably in thanks, and he set her down.

"Never bet against a velociraptor's intelligence," Claire commented with a groan as she sat up. Echo hopped over her legs and onto the floor to join her sisters, who were all fussing over Delta's sore jaw.

"When'd you wake up?" Barry asked, glancing in surprise at the clock. It usually took Claire three or four snoozes before she came fully conscious, but Owen had only slapped the clock between their beds once.

"Not sure I slept," she grumbled, rubbing her bloodshot eyes irritably.

"For the last time, I _don't snore!_ " Owen grimaced.

"And for the millionth time, yes, you do," she snapped. "But that's not the problem."

"What _is_ the problem?" Gray asked helpfully while Owen grumbled about his obviously fictitious nightly noises.

"You do remember what today is, right?" Claire asked in disbelief. Three heads shook. In fact, they did not.

" _Parent day_ ," she reminded them with a groan.

Owen's stomach clenched in terror, and he glanced uneasily back at the clock. Sure enough, it was September 5th—the first of the monthly weekends when parents could take all-expenses-paid trips to visit their kids.

"Well, I guess I get a day to myself then," Barry said with a shrug. "I grew up in an orphanage in the Democratic Republic of Congo," he admitted. "The woman I refer to as my mother is the Mother Superior. Even with all her expenses paid, she couldn't take time off from the other kids to fly out here."

"Well, you can hang with me, then," Gray responded bracingly. "My folks are too busy to take off work."

If Owen hadn't been silently panicking, he would've thought there was something odd about the way Gray looked when he said that, but since he _was_ silently panicking, he barely registered the tell. There was no way his dad was going to turn up here, right? He wouldn't come. He couldn't come. Owen had known there was a parent weekend planned each month, but he had convinced himself that his folks would have some reason not to turn up. But now, on the morning of impending doom, his mind supplied him with images of both of his parents getting off the ferry, getting on the train…

"My aunt and uncle are coming," Claire sighed moodily.

"Do you get along with 'em?" Gray asked. Blue glanced at Owen, and hopped up onto the bed, laying her head in his lap. He swallowed silently, rubbing her stomach.

"Yeah," Claire said with a noncommittal jerk of her shoulders. "I guess. I'm just worried they'll freak if they find out about Echo and the others."

"Oh, yeah," Barry responded thoughtfully. "I keep forgetting that this is all a big secret from the outside world. Do you think once we were picked, more information got sent to our homes?"

Oddly, that comment made Owen feel a little bit better. His dad didn't like snakes and lizards one bit. If he knew that there was a chance he'd see a dinosaur up close and personal, he'd be less likely to come.

"I just hope they don't get upset and try to make me leave," Claire replied tiredly. "My aunt's really poor, and she got pregnant unexpectedly, so now she has doctor bills. I was going to have to stay with my great grandma while she had the baby and got her feet under her, until I got scouted for this. She doesn't have to feed me for half a year, and we'll have ten thousand bucks when I get back. That should help. But yeah, my uncle—well, my aunt's boyfriend, really—had to help me talk her into letting me do this."

"You like dinosaurs better than great grandmas?" Owen said with a laugh, now that he'd found his voice again.

"I mean, she's okay," Claire admitted, standing up and grabbing some clothes, "but she lives in this little town that time forgot, with no library, no internet, and the closest bookstore is two miles away. And the only place she drives is to church and back every Sunday."

"Claire Dearing, willing to risk her life in an unknown experiment for access to books," Barry teased, but she nodded at him very seriously.

"It's worth the danger," she said, but the effect of her words was lost when Echo rubbed up against her leg.

"Yeah," Gray said with a laugh while Claire gave Echo a pat and then retreated to her bathroom to take a shower. "I see _lots_ of danger in this job."

Once the kids had all washed up and gotten dressed, they headed to breakfast, where Dr. Young awaited them as she'd done every morning since after the first week.

"Good morning," she greeted them as they filed in. "So, today and tomorrow, we have a lot of exciting things going on."

' _Well, Claire does_ ,' Owen mentally corrected her. ' _The rest of us get to laze around all day and play Frisbee._ '

"This morning, we're going to explore the paddock for the first time," she continued, and four pairs of eyes widened in surprise.

"For real?!" Gray exclaimed.

"That's right," Dr. Young responded. "It's not a hundred percent finished, but we're going to go out and have a look inside. Then this afternoon, the ferry will bring Mrs. Grady, Ms. Howard, and Mr. Dallas for a visit, and they'll be staying until tomorrow evening. They'll meet you in the School Room, then they'll meet the raptors, and I'll give them a brief introduction to the program. Afterwards, you can show them the park—we'll provide you and them with passes.

Gray, I wasn't able to get ahold of either of your parents; I left them messages, but they haven't called back. According to our records, neither of them came this time."

"Yeah, I know," Gray said with a shrug. "They called me and said they couldn't get off work." He held up a little flip phone as he spoke. Dr. Young nodded.

"You and Barry can have weekend passes, too," she added. "However, all four of you will need to return to the lab by nine—you can't stay in the hotel with your visitors. We don't want the raptors to think they've been abandoned." All four children nodded. "The raptors will also have a routine, in-depth medical exam tomorrow mid-morning. It's going to be a busy weekend."

The busy weekend began immediately after breakfast. They entered the school room, and Dr. Young grabbed the remote that controlled the outer doors.

"There's a cell tower beside this building," she explained. "It's tall enough that you should be able to see it from anywhere in the paddock, so if you get lost, head towards it." Owen scratched the back of his head in embarrassment, thinking about the last time he'd trusted the thing to lead him back. Then again, the paddock was probably smaller and less hilly than the jungle.

The children and raptors watched in excitement as the wall split down the middle and slid open, and they walked down the three steps to the ground. Owen breathed deeply, enjoying the feeling of actually being outside without walls or screens or roofs for the first time since his misadventure.

Delta, Echo and Charlie stayed close to Barry, Claire and Gray. Blue, however, was experienced with the outdoors, and immediately ran off into the foliage that started about ten meters from the entrance. After a few seconds, she crowed loudly from somewhere amid the leaves. Echo hesitantly started to follow her, but then looked back at Claire, uncertain.

"We're coming too," Gray assured the raptors, and Claire nodded encouragement. Echo sprinted off after Blue, followed by Delta and Charlie.

"Don't let them go too far," Dr. Young cautioned. "Much of the paddock is still fenced off, but the area you can explore is still about a quarter mile square. The lab-side enclosure is on your left, marked with a flagpole with the Jurassic World logo as the flag, and there's another enclosure on the other end, flying Masrani Corporation's logo."

"How big is it?" Claire asked, turning around at the tree line.

"A little over one and a half square miles," Dr. Young responded. "Big enough for running around and hunting practice, but not so big that we'll lose the dinosaurs. You'd best keep up with them, though. They don't have trackers yet." The children all dashed into the jungle after their raptors.

"Hey, Blue!" Owen called. "Come on back!" Although the surrounding vegetation had been—to the untrained eye—dinosaur-free a moment earlier, Blue sprang from behind a leaf and sat in front of Owen, warbling a question and cocking her head to the side. Three pairs of amber eyes appeared in the dappled green shadows around the kids.

"Do you guys hear that?" Gray asked with a frown, and then ran forward, Charlie on his heels.

A moment later, the kids were face-to-face with a heavy stream of water flooding down the concrete wall into a little river that wound away through the trees.

"Cool, swimming!" Gray exclaimed.

Barry had actually shrugged out of his shirt before Claire exclaimed, "Wait, guys, we're all dressed up for when the grownups come!"

Barry and Gray looked at each other.

"Well," Gray said with a shrug, kicking off his shoes, " _my_ parents aren't coming, so it doesn't matter how I look."

"Good point!" Barry exclaimed before plugging his nose and hopping into the middle of the river. "Cold!" he spluttered when his head broke the surface. The water was chest-deep on him at the center. Owen stuck his hand in. The water _was_ cold, like it had come from a hose. Which, he realized belatedly, it _had_ , since obviously this was all man-made. Blue leaned down to take a drink, and the other raptors followed her example, making Owen wonder just how much exploring she'd done in the jungle while he napped.

After Barry had gotten out of the water—and chucked Gray into it, for not jumping in with him—and Gray had dragged himself to shore and rung out his shirt, the four children and raptors followed the river for a hundred yards or so until they reached a chain-link fence. Then they headed into the forest a little ways, following a tall flagpole with the Jurassic World flag, and found what Dr. Young had referred to as "the enclosure."

It was one level, about half the size of a small suburban house, with a thatched roof and two walls, which created a corner that had been piled with bean bags like they had in the school room. The other two sides were only pillars—metal, but covered with a layer of wood. However, the layer had round holes at eight-inch intervals all up and down each pillar, on both sides, so that bars could extend out and complete all four walls if necessary. There was a large trough on one wall, with a spigot over it, but no handle to turn it on. It must have been controlled remotely. The other wall also had a collection of unevenly-placed square panels, about a foot long and wide each. When the kids knocked on them, they sounded hollow.

"For bringing food, maybe?" Claire suggested.

"But why?" Barry asked. "I thought the whole point of the experiment was so that people can be around them."

"Maybe they put them in for if it doesn't work," Claire shrugged. There was a long silence where everyone thought about that. Owen looked at Blue, who was trying her best to rip the stuffing out of the nearest beanbag. That morning, she'd sensed he was upset, even though he hadn't given any outward sign, and she'd tried to comfort him. He couldn't imagine her trying to hurt him. Horsing around, sure, or taking a nip at him if he did something dumb, but never actually attacking him…

"Well," he announced, "I guess they wasted their money on that one, then."

"Yeah," Gray agreed, scooping Charlie up into his arms. "I guess they did. Let's go see more forest, okay? This place is boring."

"Yeah," Barry agreed, heading back out into the sunlight.

They walked for a little while, heading for the tiny Masrani Corporation flag in the distance, but eventually hit the chain link fence again. They followed it for a little while, looking out at the jungle on the other side, and the workmen going back and forth, building what appeared to be a roof. Except that it wouldn't be of much use to anyone, because it was at least thirty feet in the air, held up by support columns at regular intervals, and didn't appear to be particularly wide, although it spanned—as far as the kids could tell—from one cement wall to the other.

"Now why would they do that?" Barry murmured thoughtfully.

"Maybe it's more catwalks?" Claire suggested. They'd seen a few aerial walkways on their hike already.

"Way too big, and too high up," Gray disagreed with a shake of his head. "And the catwalks all have railings."

"Well, they aren't done building it yet," Claire huffed.

"It's a wall," Owen realized suddenly. Everyone looked over at him like he was an idiot, mixing up basic structures. "They're like a garage door," he explained. "They hang flat above your head when they're open, but they slide down to the ground when they close. That thing is a big metal wall that they can open and shut whenever they need to."

Just then, a loud warning buzz sounded, and exactly as Owen had imagined, a segment of the metal roof angled upwards, and slid to the ground with a crash. The raptors chittered nervously at the loud sound, Blue trying to scramble up Owen's pants leg. He picked her up and set her on his shoulder, but she stuck her leg down the neck of his shirt, clearly trying to get inside.

"No, Blue," he grumbled, "You can't climb around in my clothes every time you get scared." Blue looked up at him quizzically, and then another warning buzz preceded another test-close. Abandoning her attempt to climb in carefully, Blue dove headfirst down the neck of Owen's shirt with a petrified squeak and the sound of elastic stretching too far, and although the boy exclaimed wordlessly in annoyance, he caught her before she could tumble out the bottom.

"You _gotta_ stop doin' that," he sighed, but he held onto the trembling form anyway, petting her through the cotton. He looked around in embarrassment, but the other children had each picked up their dinosaurs too, and the other dinosaurs didn't seem any happier about the construction noises and periodic shaking of the ground than Blue was.

"Maybe let's head back," Barry suggested, nodding towards the flashing light of the lab's cell tower.

"Good idea," Claire agreed, and Owen and Gray nodded.

 **A/N: Claire's aunt and uncle's last names are Dallas and Howard… Didja see what I did there? Hehe. Next up, the dreaded, the feared,** _ **Parental Visit!**_


End file.
